DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Four Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice (SRP) of­fi­cers for­mer­ly as­signed to the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion have suc­ceed­ed in the law­suit over their fail­ure to re­ceive gra­tu­ities af­ter they were re­called from the cor­po­ra­tion. 

De­liv­er­ing an oral judg­ment on Tues­day, High Court Judge Car­ol Gob­in up­held the case brought by Aaron Ram­ba­hal, Cur­tis Rame­sar, Oma­tee Ali, and Pe­ter Charles against the cor­po­ra­tion. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, be­tween 2010 and 2011, the group was re­as­signed to the cor­po­ra­tion to help aug­ment its mu­nic­i­pal po­lice force. 

At the time of their trans­fer, the SRP Ad­ju­tant sent a doc­u­ment out­lin­ing the terms and con­di­tions of their em­ploy­ment to the cor­po­ra­tion. 

The doc­u­ment con­tained a clause in­di­cat­ing that they should re­ceive a gra­tu­ity of 20 per cent of the gross salary they re­ceived while as­signed to the cor­po­ra­tion less tax­es up­on com­plet­ing their as­sign­ment. 

In March 2019, then-po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith is­sued a di­rec­tive re­call­ing all SRPs sim­i­lar­ly as­signed to cor­po­ra­tions. 

The SRPs filed the case af­ter the cor­po­ra­tion al­leged­ly ig­nored their re­quest to be paid their gra­tu­ities. 

In its de­fence, the cor­po­ra­tion, through its lawyers led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan, claimed that it was not bound by the terms and con­di­tions pre­sent­ed to it be­cause it did not ex­press­ly agree to such. 

It al­so claimed that the SRPs were not con­tin­u­ous­ly en­gaged by the cor­po­ra­tion and were on pe­ri­od­ic month-to-month con­tracts. 

It al­leged that the case was statute barred as it should have been filed with­in four years of each con­tract al­leged­ly end­ing. 

The SRPs’ lawyers led by Mario Mer­ritt and Alex­ia Romero chal­lenged the lat­ter po­si­tion as they claimed that the en­gage­ment pe­ri­od was con­tin­u­ous. 

They al­so point­ed to cor­re­spon­dence from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment from March 2019 in which the cor­po­ra­tion was in­struct­ed to pay the gra­tu­ity to the SRPs. 

In her judg­ment, Jus­tice Gob­in agreed that the SRPs were en­ti­tled to their gra­tu­ities and gave the at­tor­neys for the par­ties time to sub­mit their cal­cu­la­tions of the in­di­vid­ual pay­ments that had to be made. 

She al­so or­dered the cor­po­ra­tion to pay the of­fi­cers’ le­gal costs for the law­suit. 

The SRPs were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Sade Mc Queen, while Robert Ab­dool-Mitchell and Jared Ja­groo ap­peared along­side Ram­lo­gan for the cor­po­ra­tion.