DEREK ACHONG

A sec­ondary school teacher from Bar­rack­pore is set to re­ceive com­pen­sa­tion for an over decade-long de­lay in con­firm­ing her per­ma­nent ap­point­ment. 

In Au­gust, Mar­lena Mo­han filed a law­suit against the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice al­leg­ing that her con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pro­tec­tion of the law, equal­i­ty of treat­ment by a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty and en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty had been in­fringed by the de­lay. 

Al­most a month lat­er, the law­suit was set­tled with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (TSC) agree­ing to pro­mote Mo­han from May 2013 retroac­tive­ly. 

Mo­han is now ex­pect­ed to be paid the ar­rears in her salary and ben­e­fits that she would have re­ceived had she been con­firmed over a decade ago. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, Mo­han joined the teach­ing ser­vice as an as­sis­tant teacher in 2003. 

Mo­han was ini­tial­ly as­signed to the Point Fortin Ju­nior Sec­ondary School to hold on for two teach­ers, who were on ma­ter­ni­ty leave. 

She was then of­fered a po­si­tion at the Fyz­abad Sec­ondary School. 

In 2009, Mo­han ob­tained a de­gree in Span­ish and Latin Amer­i­can Stud­ies from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies. 

She sub­mit­ted her tran­scripts to the min­istry in the hope of be­ing as­sessed and pro­mot­ed to the rank of Teacher III. 

The min­istry took al­most two years to re­spond but con­firmed that she had the req­ui­site qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be con­sid­ered by the TSC for the ap­point­ment. 

Mo­han was giv­en tem­po­rary ap­point­ments to the rank of Teacher III and was tasked with teach­ing stu­dents prepar­ing for CXC ex­am­i­na­tions sim­i­lar­ly to col­leagues hold­ing per­ma­nent ap­point­ments. 

In Oc­to­ber 2018, the min­istry re­mind­ed the TSC that Mo­han still had to be as­sessed. 

Mo­han made nu­mer­ous at­tempts to con­tact the com­mis­sion be­fore be­ing in­formed that she had to be re­assessed by the min­istry. The com­mis­sion claimed the min­istry is­sued a let­ter con­firm­ing the re­assess­ment months ear­li­er. 

“The Claimant con­tin­ues to be left in an un­for­tu­nate po­si­tion be­tween the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the TSC where­by the two au­thor­i­ties ap­pear to be in­ef­fec­tu­al in com­mu­ni­cat­ing with each oth­er in or­der to rec­ti­fy any er­rors and halt the fur­ther wastage of time,” her lawyers said. 

“The Claimant con­tin­ues to en­dure hard­ship and a grace de­gree of un­fair treat­ment by both au­thor­i­ties as the Claimant earns much less than that of which she is qual­i­fied to earn and that of the works she per­forms,” they added. 

Mo­han was rep­re­sent­ed by David-Mark Kid­ney and An­ton Gran­tum. 

In Au­gust, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad par­tial­ly up­held a law­suit from a teacher, who ex­pe­ri­enced sim­i­lar de­lays to Mo­han, and award­ed over $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion. 

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad strong­ly crit­i­cised the com­mis­sion for its de­lay in per­form­ing its func­tions. 

“The Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion plays a crit­i­cal role in this Re­pub­lic and va­can­cies with­in the school sys­tem should be filled with­out de­lay so as to en­sure that the na­tion’s chil­dren get the best pos­si­ble ed­u­ca­tion,” he said. Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so sug­gest­ed that con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form may be re­quired to help im­prove the sit­u­a­tion. 

“Such a cir­cum­stance is cause for con­cern and should catal­yse a clar­i­on call for con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form as it ap­pears that the First De­fen­dant (TSC) is no longer able to ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly man­age the hir­ing, pro­mo­tion and dis­ci­pli­nary ac­tion over teach­ers,” he said.