Derek Achong

A for­mer Pres­i­dent’s Gold Medal schol­ar­ship awardee has ob­tained an in­junc­tion, block­ing the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion from tak­ing ac­tion against him for breach of his schol­ar­ship con­tract, pend­ing his law­suit over the min­istry’s de­ci­sion to refuse to de­fer his oblig­a­tory ser­vice to com­plete his post­grad­u­ate stud­ies. 

The in­junc­tion for Dr Ryan Laloo was grant­ed by High Court Judge Ricky Rahim on Mon­day, af­ter his at­tor­neys and those for the min­istry and the Cab­i­net con­sent­ed to it. 

Un­der the terms of the in­junc­tion, the min­istry agreed not to is­sue the first no­tice of the breach to Laloo or com­pel him to re­turn to T&T to start his oblig­a­tory ser­vice pend­ing the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion of the law­suit be­fore Jus­tice Rahim. 

Ear­li­er this month, Laloo and his old­er broth­er Mark, a vet­eri­nar­i­an and a na­tion­al open schol­ar­ship win­ner, both filed sep­a­rate law­suits over the min­istry’s oblig­a­tory ser­vice pol­i­cy. 

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, which was ap­proved by the Cab­i­net in Feb­ru­ary 2014.

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

In the law­suit, Laloo’s lawyer Ganesh Sa­roop claimed 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. 

At­tached to Laloo’s law­suit is an af­fi­davit from in­ter­na­tion­al­ly renowned vas­cu­lar sur­geon Pro­fes­sor Vi­jay Narayans­ingh, who gave ex­pert ev­i­dence on the 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 spe­cial­i­ty train­ing. 

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 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, Kent Sam­lal and Gary Ramkissoon. The Cab­i­net was rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Michael Quam­i­na and Lau­ra Per­sad, while Rishi Dass, Savi Ramhit and Aki­ni Mur­ray rep­re­sent­ed the min­istry.

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