Derek Achong

A pair of sib­lings from San Fer­nan­do, who both re­ceived na­tion­al open schol­ar­ships, have ini­ti­at­ed sep­a­rate law­suits over be­ing de­nied ap­proval to de­fer their oblig­a­tory ser­vice to com­plete their post­grad­u­ate stud­ies. 

Last Fri­day, High Court Judge Ricky Rahim grant­ed med­ical doc­tor, Dr Ryan Laloo, leave to pur­sue his ju­di­cial re­view case against the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and the Cab­i­net. 

On Tues­day, his old­er broth­er Mark, a vet­eri­nar­i­an, was grant­ed leave to pur­sue a sep­a­rate law­suit against the min­istry’s per­ma­nent sec­re­tary on­ly by High Court Judge Kevin Ram­cha­ran. 

In his law­suit, Laloo, who won the Pres­i­dent’s Medal for his per­for­mance in Caribbean Sec­ondary Ed­u­ca­tion Cer­tifi­cate (CSEC) ex­am­i­na­tions and Pres­i­dent’s Gold Medal for his sub­se­quent per­for­mance in the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tion (CAPE) in 2009 and 2011, is chal­leng­ing the pol­i­cy on de­fer­ral of oblig­a­tory ser­vice for re­cip­i­ents of gov­ern­ment schol­ar­ships, which was ap­proved by the Cab­i­net in Feb­ru­ary 2014. 

The pol­i­cy states that the de­fer­ral of oblig­a­tory ser­vice will be guid­ed by the coun­try’s need to har­ness ar­eas of study which are con­sid­ered to be of high pri­or­i­ty and by op­por­tu­ni­ties to in­crease the val­ue of the schol­ar’s con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al im­por­tance. 

It adds that in or­der to qual­i­fy, schol­ars must pur­sue post­grad­u­ate stud­ies in an area aligned to the coun­try’s hu­man re­source needs, an in­tern­ship, a res­i­den­cy pro­gramme, or short-term em­ploy­ment for a max­i­mum of two years to max­imise their com­pe­ten­cies in their field.

The pol­i­cy states schol­ars will be on­ly al­lowed a six-year de­fer­ral to pur­sue post­grad­u­ate stud­ies. 

In the law­suit, Laloo’s lawyer Ganesh Sa­roop claims the pol­i­cy was ir­ra­tional, un­fair and un­rea­son­able, as it pre­clud­ed his client from pur­su­ing spe­cial­ist train­ing in vas­cu­lar surgery, gen­er­al surgery and trau­ma and or­thopaedic surgery, which is not avail­able in T&T and takes eight years to com­plete. 

“Such an in­flex­i­ble con­struc­tion is ir­ra­tional, be­cause it is im­prac­ti­cal and would lead to a man­i­fest ab­sur­di­ty where­by the pol­i­cy ef­fec­tive­ly ex­cludes high­ly spe­cialised fields of train­ing in med­i­cine re­gard­less of how crit­i­cal­ly de­fi­cient the coun­try is in that area, or how bad­ly the coun­try needs such ex­per­tise,” Sa­roop said. 

At­tached to Laloo’s law­suit is an af­fi­davit from in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned vas­cu­lar sur­geon Pro­fes­sor Vi­jay Narayans­ingh, who gave ex­pert ev­i­dence over the length of time re­quired to com­plete the train­ing sought by Laloo and the lo­cal need for doc­tors spe­cialised in the field. 

Narayans­ingh not­ed that vas­cu­lar sur­geons play an im­por­tant role in min­imis­ing limb loss in cas­es of am­pu­ta­tions for di­a­bet­ics and claimed there was a dire short­age of doc­tors with this spe­cial­i­ty train­ing. 

“In ad­di­tion, al­though stroke is the sec­ond com­mon­est cause of death in T&T, few­er than a to­tal of ten carotid op­er­a­tions are done an­nu­al­ly at our ma­jor hos­pi­tals,” he said. 

In the court fil­ings, Sa­roop claimed while Laloo was com­plet­ing his in­tern­ship in the Unit­ed King­dom (UK) in 2019, he was told he was se­lect­ed for a fel­low­ship to ob­tain the post­grad­u­ate train­ing be­tween that year and 2027, which would be fund­ed by the UK’s Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Health Re­search. 

Say­ing the fel­low­ship is on­ly award­ed to four stu­dents in the UK an­nu­al­ly, Sa­roop said: “It was an in­valu­able op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op his ca­reer and bet­ter serve his coun­try.” 

Laloo in­formed the min­istry of the op­por­tu­ni­ty and was told he had to re­turn to T&T to make the ap­pli­ca­tion for de­fer­ral of ser­vice and to seek the ap­proval of Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Roshan Paras­ram. 

Laloo com­plied but was on­ly in­formed his ap­pli­ca­tion was re­ject­ed in March this year, af­ter he had al­ready be­gun the train­ing.

“He was busy fo­cus­ing on his pro­gramme and was op­er­at­ing on the ba­sis of a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that his ap­pli­ca­tion had been or would be ap­proved and the let­ter of ap­proval was prob­a­bly caught up in bu­reau­cra­cy,” Sa­roop said. 

In his law­suit, Laloo’s old­er broth­er Mark is not chal­leng­ing the pol­i­cy but rather its ap­pli­ca­tion to his post­grad­u­ate stud­ies. 

Mark was award­ed the open schol­ar­ship in 2009 and stud­ied in the Unit­ed King­dom (UK), where he qual­i­fied as a vet­eri­nary sur­geon from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­in­burgh in 2015. 
He was giv­en a two-year de­fer­ral for short-term em­ploy­ment in the UK be­fore be­ing grant­ed a three-year de­fer­ral to pur­sue post­grad­u­ate train­ing in small an­i­mal med­i­cine. 

He claimed that when he com­plet­ed the pro­gramme, he ap­plied for an­oth­er three-year ex­ten­sion to do post­grad­u­ate stud­ies in ad­vanced vet­eri­nary prac­tice at the Roy­al Col­lege of Vet­eri­nary Sur­geons but it was de­nied. In his law­suit, the el­der Laloo is claim­ing his ap­pli­ca­tion was un­fair­ly de­nied by the min­istry. 

His lawyers point­ed out that their client’s ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied as it was wrong­ly claimed he was pur­su­ing the de­fer­ral on three grounds as op­posed to two, which is per­mit­ted un­der the pol­i­cy. They not­ed that the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary took al­most 18 months to re­spond to Laloo’s ap­pli­ca­tion and he had to en­rol in the post­grad­u­ate pro­gramme, which he is fi­nanc­ing him­self and is not avail­able lo­cal­ly.  

The sib­lings are al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Kent Sam­lal, Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al, Gary Ramkissoon and Natasha Bis­ram.

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