A High Court judge has or­dered that a woman po­lice of­fi­cer be pro­mot­ed to the rank of sergeant with retroac­tive ef­fect for three years af­ter rul­ing that she was treat­ed un­fair­ly. Jus­tice James Aboud al­so grant­ed a de­c­la­ra­tion that Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice breached Reg­u­la­tion 156 of the Po­lice Ser­vice Reg­u­la­tions and il­le­gal­ly by­passed of­fi­cer Ni­na Rawl­ins for pro­mo­tion.

Rawl­ins, at­tached to the Cou­va Po­lice Sta­tion, filed for ju­di­cial re­view in 2017 af­ter she wrote and passed the pro­mo­tion ex­am­i­na­tion but she was not pro­mot­ed.

In her af­fi­davit, Rawl­ins said she was told that she was by­passed on the "mis­tak­en be­lief" that she had a pend­ing dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ter for ne­glect of du­ty be­tween March 13 and 14, 2015. She stat­ed that by mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed June 22, 2016 the dis­ci­pli­nary of­fi­cer of the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion is­sued a mem­o­ran­dum to the se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent of the hu­man re­source branch stat­ing that there were no tri­bunal mat­ters against her.

In her af­fi­davit, Rawl­ins said, "It is there­fore un­fair, un­law­ful and il­le­gal that I was by­passed for pro­mo­tion to the post of sergeant by per­sons who are ju­nior to me and have dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters against them on the ba­sis that there are dis­ci­pli­nary charges against me when in fact there are none."

She said it was al­so un­fair and il­le­gal that prop­er pro­ce­dure for in­ves­ti­gat­ing dis­ci­pli­nary and dis­ci­plin­ing po­lice of­fi­cers un­der Reg­u­la­tion 156 was not utilised in her favour.

Rawl­ins stat­ed that she was en­ti­tled to be con­sid­ered for pro­mo­tion since there were no dis­ci­pli­nary charges against her. She com­plained that the com­mis­sion­er's con­duct af­fect­ed her ca­reer ad­vance­ment to in­spec­tor and it has al­so had a domi­no ef­fect on her el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for fu­ture act­ing ap­point­ments.

Fol­low­ing sev­er­al un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts to get this is­sue sort­ed out, Rawl­ins is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter to the com­mis­sion­er in Jan­u­ary 2017.

She re­ceived no mean­ing­ful re­sponse to her let­ter re­gard­ing the sta­tus of the dis­ci­pli­nary

charges, how long the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the charges was like­ly to be and whether she was el­i­gi­ble for pro­mo­tion.

Rawl­in's at­tor­ney Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, ar­gued that she ought to be pro­mot­ed with im­me­di­ate retroac­tive ef­fect from April 2016 so that she could re­gain her right­ful se­nior­i­ty and ben­e­fits.

How­ev­er, the de­fen­dant's at­tor­ney Nairob Smart coun­tered that it would be im­pos­si­ble for the com­mis­sion­er to do that be­cause there was no va­can­cy now to ac­com­mo­date such a long retroac­tive pro­mo­tion.

The court, how­ev­er, ruled in Rawl­in's favour.

Rawl­ins was rep­re­sent­ed by Ram­lo­gan and at­tor­ney Alana Ram­baran of the Free­dom Law Cham­bers, while the state was rep­re­sent­ed by Smart and at­tor­ney Ste­fan Jaikaran.