The Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) has been or­dered to pay $38,000 in fines for Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act (OS­HA) vi­o­la­tions at its head­quar­ters at Aber­crom­by Street in Port-of-Spain.

In­dus­tri­al Court Judges Her­bert Sover­all, Wendy Ali and Jil­lian Bartlett im­posed the fines af­ter the as­so­ci­a­tion plead­ed guilty to 17 vi­o­la­tions un­der the act dur­ing a hear­ing, on Mon­day.

The as­so­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents pub­lic ser­vants, is lead by Wat­son Duke.

While the leg­is­la­tion pre­scribes much high­er fines for the of­fences, the court on­ly fined the as­so­ci­a­tion $2,000 for each of­fence and an ad­di­tion­al $4,000 for not hav­ing a valid fire cer­tifi­cate based on its mit­i­ga­tion plea.

The PSA’s lawyers Wen­dell Seep­er­sad and Fe­l­isha Thomas point­ed out that their client ac­cept­ed li­a­bil­i­ty and took steps to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, the of­fi­cials of the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Au­thor­i­ty filed the of­fences af­ter they per­formed an in­spec­tion in No­vem­ber 2017 and found that is­sues they had raised in it, had not been reme­died with­in the rec­om­mend­ed time.

While the court not­ed that the PSA had tak­en steps to be com­pli­ant, it still im­posed the fines as it point­ed out that there was an in­or­di­nate de­lay be­tween be­ing no­ti­fied of the in­frac­tions and cor­rect­ing them.

The PSA was giv­en un­til Jan­u­ary 15 to pay the fines.