Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

An em­ploy­ee of the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) is su­ing her em­ploy­er, af­ter she was re­as­signed to an­oth­er de­part­ment af­ter be­ing ac­cused of prac­tis­ing “voodoo.”

Through her at­tor­ney Ki­ran Pan­day, Mindy Ra­moutar, a clerk typ­ist I and act­ing stenog­ra­ph­er II, sent a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter on Feb­ru­ary 10 to Com­mis­sion­er of In­land Rev­enue and chair­man of the board, De­o­mati Ram­dass.

Ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, in Sep­tem­ber 2024, Ra­moutar was gift­ed a cul­tur­al arte­fact by her col­league, who had re­turned from va­ca­tion in the Unit­ed States. She placed the arte­fact on her work desk, which she had full au­thor­i­ty to use.

Ra­moutar re­ceived a let­ter from the Hu­man Re­source De­part­ment (HR) on De­cem­ber 10, 2024, in­form­ing her that she was be­ing re­as­signed to the BIR’s Le­gal Unit.

Af­ter re­view­ing the let­ter, the at­tor­ney said, his client re­turned it to HR be­cause it failed to state the rea­sons for her re­as­sign­ment.

The pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter stat­ed, “You in­di­cat­ed to her that she was in­volved in the prac­tice of “voodoo” and showed her a pic­ture of the arte­fact which was on your cel­lu­lar phone. My client in­formed you that the afore­men­tioned arte­fact was a gift from a col­league of BIR who had re­turned from New Or­leans and isn’t as­so­ci­at­ed with voodoo.”

He said Ra­moutar pro­ceed­ed on va­ca­tion leave on Jan­u­ary 6 as she “was suf­fer­ing from shock and em­bar­rass­ment due to your histri­on­ics” and the al­le­ga­tion made against her.

When Ra­moutar re­turned to work on Feb­ru­ary 3 she was de­nied ac­cess to the 22nd floor, where she per­forms her du­ties.

Even­tu­al­ly, a col­league al­lowed her in­side and in­formed her se­cu­ri­ty was ad­vised to re­strict her ac­cess, as she was no longer al­lowed on that floor.

Pan­day said Ra­moutar sent cor­re­spon­dence to Ram­dass re­quest­ing jus­ti­fi­ca­tion from the board about her re­as­sign­ment and Dan re­spond­ed, in­di­cat­ing she agreed with Ra­moutar seek­ing an ex­pla­na­tion.

He said Ram­dass’ cor­re­spon­dence stat­ed, “It is my opin­ion that the re­quest to have Ms Ra­moutar re­as­signed is in the best in­ter­est of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

“I am sure that with Ms Ra­moutar’s knowl­edge in IRD’s func­tion­ing, she will be an as­set to the Le­gal Unit where she has been re­as­signed.”

Pan­day, in the let­ter, in­di­cat­ed that Ram­dass failed and/or ne­glect­ed to pro­vide his client with any jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for her de­ci­sion to re­as­sign her to the Le­gal Unit of the BIR.

“My client was vic­timised based on her be­ing ac­cused of prac­tic­ing ‘voodoo,’ which is com­plete­ly un­true as she is a de­vout Hin­du. Your ac­tions have caused my client to suf­fer feel­ings of em­bar­rass­ment, emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal dis­tress which have se­vere­ly af­fect­ed her pro­fes­sion­al and pri­vate life.”

He said Ra­moutar was de­sirous of re­turn­ing to her du­ties as an act­ing stenog­ra­ph­er.

Fail­ure to do so, he said, would re­sult in the fil­ing of High Court Pro­ceed­ings to com­pel her to do it. Ra­moutar is al­so re­quest­ing $1,500 com­pen­sa­tion for her le­gal costs. Ram­dass has 28 days to re­spond or face le­gal ac­tion.