BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt)

The Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion (EOC) is not be­ing left out of the lo­cal dis­cus­sion on racial and oth­er forms of dis­crim­i­na­tion, which has height­ened over the past days with re­marks made by some in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty last week.

So­cial me­dia has been ablaze with the African com­mu­ni­ty speak­ing up about their ex­pe­ri­ences with racism and dis­crim­i­na­tion here in T&T.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the chair­man of the EOC Lynette See­baran-Suite, con­firmed the EOC had dealt with bench­mark cas­es in­volv­ing al­le­ga­tions of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion vic­tim­i­sa­tion and de­nial for an op­por­tu­ni­ty for up­ward move­ment in the work­place—mat­ters that reached the EOC’s Tri­bunal arm.

List­ing three, she said not­ed they were all cas­es against pub­lic sec­tor bod­ies, in which all three com­plainants won their mat­ters.

In 2014, Ker­win Sim­mons an em­ploy­ee of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), al­leged he was dis­crim­i­nat­ed against be­cause of his race—African de­cent. His com­plaint of dis­crim­i­na­tion was ground­ed on the as­ser­tion that he was treat­ed less favourably than an­oth­er em­ploy­ee of the re­spon­dent Si­mon Ba­haw who was of East-In­di­an de­scent.

In 2013 Gee­ta Sa­ha­too an em­ploy­ee of the Min­istry of Labour and Small and Mi­cro En­ter­pris­es al­leged she was dis­crim­i­nat­ed against, re­gard­ing ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­mo­tion and train­ing in breach of Sec­tion 9 of the EOC Act chap­ter 22:03.

In 2012 Desmond Noel an em­ploy­ee in the of­fice of The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al of Trinidad and To­ba­go al­leged he was dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by be­ing treat­ed less favourably than per­sons of a dif­fer­ent race by re­fusal and or de­lib­er­ate omis­sion to af­ford Noel ac­cess to the op­por­tu­ni­ty to act in the post of Au­dit Di­rec­tor dur­ing stip­u­lat­ed dates in 2010 and 2011.

See­baran Suite not­ed EOC’s mis­sion as set out in its Act is to pro­mote equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty and to elim­i­nate dis­crim­i­na­tion in T&T.

She said the EOC as man­dat­ed by its Act al­so had a core func­tion —to re­ceive and in­ves­ti­gate com­plaints of dis­crim­i­na­tion in sev­er­al ar­eas— em­ploy­ment, the pro­vi­sion of goods and ser­vices, the pro­vi­sion of ed­u­ca­tion, and the pro­vi­sion of hous­ing/ ac­com­mo­da­tion.

She not­ed how­ev­er, it was to be un­der­stood com­plaints made in any of these four ar­eas could not be just any com­plaint, but a com­plaint of dis­crim­i­na­tion must be based on cer­tain per­son­al and in­her­ent char­ac­ter­is­tics known as sta­tus.

“So you must al­lege that the dis­crim­i­na­tion is ei­ther based on sex, race, dis­abil­i­ty, eth­nic­i­ty mar­i­tal sta­tus, and ge­o­graph­ic ori­gin. So if you are dis­crim­i­nat­ed in one of those four ar­eas, then you can make a com­plaint to the EOC and the EOC will in­ves­ti­gate and we will then try to con­cil­i­ate the com­plaint and if we don’t come to a con­cil­i­a­tion we can tell the per­son to come to the ta­ble to con­cil­i­ate the oth­er side. If they come to the ta­ble and there is no res­o­lu­tion then the per­son who is mak­ing the com­plaint has re­course to the EOC’s Tri­bunal,” See­baran-Suite ex­plained.

The EOC Tri­bunal is a court just like the High Court or the In­dus­tri­al Court, and their re­mit is to hold a hear­ing in­to the mat­ter and ad­ju­di­cate on it. If they find for the com­plainant, they can or­der the pay­ment of mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion (known as dam­ages), or they can or­der that the re­spon­dent en­gages in cer­tain al­ter­na­tive ac­tions such as pro­mot­ing the per­son, etc.

See­baran-Suite said the EOC al­so had a broad­er mis­sion to pro­mote equal­i­ty and rid dis­crim­i­na­tion from a stance of ad­vo­ca­cy and re­search and ad­vis­ing the Gov­ern­ment on pol­i­cy and law re­form.

“Un­der my chair­man­ship since 2014, we have tried to be very ac­tive in that area of ad­vo­ca­cy and that is in the area of law re­form.”

She said since 2014 the EOC had been press­ing the Gov­ern­ment to amend the EOC’s leg­is­la­tion be­cause the de­f­i­n­i­tion of sex in its cur­rent leg­is­la­tion ex­cludes sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, mak­ing it non-ex­is­tent for a per­son to com­plain they were be­ing dis­crim­i­nat­ed against as a re­sult of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. She said it is a big prob­lem and an is­sue the EOC con­tin­ues to ad­dress re­gard­less of the sit­ting Gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.

See­baran-Suite said to ed­u­cate peo­ple on their rights and what is dis­crim­i­na­tion, the EOC con­sis­tent­ly hosts sem­i­nars and out­reach pro­grammes which en­gage dis­cus­sion on dis­crim­i­na­tion as it per­tains to dis­abil­i­ty, gen­der equal­i­ty, and oth­er ar­eas.

The EOC Act ap­plies to both the pub­lic sec­tor and pri­vate sec­tor, af­ford­ing an em­ploy­ee in the pri­vate sec­tor to file a com­plaint with the Com­mis­sion, how­ev­er, See­baran-Suite said it had not had any pri­vate sec­tor race com­plaints go to the Tri­bunal, but has had com­plaints in oth­er cat­e­gories that were re­solved dur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion and con­cil­i­a­tion lev­el.