A large group of for­mer Spe­cial Re­serve Po­lice of­fi­cers (SRPs) have won their case over de­lays in pay­ing them salary ar­rears af­ter they were ab­sorbed in­to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) in 2009.

In a re­cent judg­ment, High Court Judge Joan Charles up­held a ju­di­cial re­view case over the de­lay brought by 54 of­fi­cers.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the out­come of the case will al­so af­fect oth­er sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­stanced of­fi­cers, who did not par­tic­i­pate in the law­suit.

In their court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, the group’s lawyers, led by Kiel Tak­lals­ingh, claimed that they were work­ing as full-time SRP dri­vers when they and al­most two dozen col­leagues were ab­sorbed in­to the TTPS in late 2009.

At the time, their salaries were sup­posed to be ad­just­ed in ac­cor­dance with the Clas­si­fi­ca­tion and Com­pen­sa­tion Plan for 2005 to 2007.

A Cab­i­net note was pre­pared to al­lo­cate $10,983,600 to make retroac­tive pay­ments to 270 SRPs in­clud­ing the even­tu­al lit­i­gants.

“The al­lo­ca­tion of this mon­ey, when tak­en with the Cab­i­net note and minute, meant that the claimants ac­quired a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion to have the said retroac­tive pay­ment cal­cu­lat­ed and paid,” their lawyers said.

“The de­fen­dant has act­ed ir­ra­tional­ly and/or un­rea­son­ably by fail­ing to act on the said rep­re­sen­ta­tions made by way of the Cab­i­net min­utes and/or note,” they added.

When the of­fi­cers, through their lawyers, sent cor­re­spon­dence threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion in 2022, the TTPS Le­gal Unit claimed that the de­lay in rec­ti­fy­ing the is­sue was due to dif­fi­cul­ties in se­cur­ing work­sheets for the of­fi­cers need­ed to cal­cu­late their salary ar­rears.

When the unit even­tu­al­ly ob­tained the doc­u­ments, it claimed that the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er need­ed time to con­sid­er such.

The of­fi­cers filed the case af­ter their lawyers failed to re­ceive an ad­e­quate re­sponse by May 2023.

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Charles is­sued a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the han­dling of the is­sue. She al­so grant­ed an or­der com­pelling the TTPS to make the pay­ments to the of­fi­cers.

The TTPS was al­so or­dered to pay the of­fi­cers’ le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the case. The of­fi­cers were al­so rep­re­sent­ed by De­siree Sankar.