Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

An Air Guard mem­ber has lost his le­gal chal­lenge against the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force (TTDF) over his dis­charge for al­leged dis­ci­pli­nary breach­es and poor per­for­mance.

The out­come of the case brought by se­nior air­craft­man Kwame Joe­field was con­firmed by the TTDF in a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day.

It said High Court Judge West­min James dis­missed Joe­field’s claim, in which he ar­gued that his sep­a­ra­tion from the Air Guard was un­law­ful, pro­ce­du­ral­ly un­fair and an im­prop­er ex­er­cise of ad­min­is­tra­tive dis­cre­tion.

The court al­so re­fused his re­quests for re­in­state­ment, back­pay and com­pen­sa­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTDF, Jus­tice James found that Joe­field was af­ford­ed mul­ti­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­spond to con­cerns about his ser­vice record through a struc­tured, mul­ti-tiered re­view process.

“The court re­ject­ed Joe­field’s al­le­ga­tions of pro­ce­dur­al un­fair­ness, find­ing that he was af­ford­ed mul­ti­ple op­por­tu­ni­ties to ad­dress his ser­vice record through a struc­tured, mul­ti-tiered re­view process,” the state­ment said.

It added that the judge con­clud­ed Joe­field was ful­ly aware of the case against him and had been clear­ly in­formed that his sep­a­ra­tion was be­ing pur­sued on the ba­sis of un­sat­is­fac­to­ry per­for­mance.

The court fur­ther found that there was no breach of Joe­field’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to equal­i­ty of treat­ment by a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty.

In re­ject­ing com­par­isons with oth­er of­fi­cers fac­ing sim­i­lar al­le­ga­tions, the judge not­ed that Joe­field’s ser­vice record was marked by a dis­tinct pat­tern of is­sues.

“The judge not­ed that Joe­field’s ser­vice record was ‘unique­ly prob­lem­at­ic’, in­volv­ing a com­bi­na­tion of dis­ci­pli­nary con­vic­tions, ex­ces­sive sick leave av­er­ag­ing one day in ten, and poor per­for­mance ap­praisals while on pro­ba­tion,” the state­ment said.

The TTDF said the rul­ing re­in­forces its au­thor­i­ty to man­age per­son­nel and main­tain dis­ci­pline with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“The court un­der­scored that it would not sub­sti­tute its own judg­ment for that of com­pe­tent mil­i­tary au­thor­i­ties re­gard­ing the suit­abil­i­ty of of­fi­cers un­der pro­ba­tion,” it added.

It said the De­fence Force re­mains com­mit­ted to up­hold­ing the rule of law and en­sur­ing the in­tegri­ty of its ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es.