A se­nior fire of­fi­cer has been grant­ed per­mis­sion to pur­sue his law­suit over be­ing al­leged­ly by­passed for pro­mo­tion in favour of a col­league, who was his ju­nior.

Last month, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed grant­ed Act­ing As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer Siew­nar­ine Ram­saran leave to pur­sue his law­suit against the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Ram­saran sought to act as Deputy Chief Fire Of­fi­cer af­ter the po­si­tion be­came va­cant in May 2019.

How­ev­er, he was in­formed that he could not qual­i­fy for the sub­stan­tive po­si­tion as he had not com­plet­ed a brigade com­mand course, which was the pre­req­ui­site for the po­si­tion.

Ram­saran’s col­league Mervyn Layne, al­so a Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer who was act­ing as an As­sis­tant Chief Fire Of­fi­cer, was even­tu­al­ly grant­ed the act­ing ap­point­ment over him de­spite him (Ram­saran) hav­ing se­nior­i­ty in the sub­stan­tive post they held.

Ram­saran sub­se­quent­ly com­plet­ed the course in the Unit­ed King­dom.

Ram­saran re­peat­ed­ly sought in­for­ma­tion on why he was by­passed for the act­ing po­si­tion be­fore be­ing even­tu­al­ly in­formed in Ju­ly that it was be­cause he did not have the full qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the sub­stan­tive post at the time and Layne did.

In the law­suit, Ram­saran’s lawyers are con­tend­ing that the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) breached its own reg­u­la­tions, as act­ing ap­point­ments are as­signed based on se­nior­i­ty.

“The gen­er­al rule is that se­nior­i­ty de­ter­mines act­ing ap­point­ments in the high­er ranks of the T&T Fire Ser­vice,” they said in the ju­di­cial re­view ap­pli­ca­tion.

Through the law­suit, Ram­saran is seek­ing an or­der and de­c­la­ra­tions against the al­leged pol­i­cy. He is al­so seek­ing de­c­la­ra­tions and dam­ages for al­leged breach­es of his con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and equal­i­ty of treat­ment from a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty.

Ram­saran is al­so seek­ing the al­most $100,000 in salary and ben­e­fits he would have re­ceived if he had been grant­ed the tem­po­rary pro­mo­tion last year.

Ram­saran is be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Ger­ald Ramdeen, and Alana Ram­bar­ran.

The case is ex­pect­ed to come up for case man­age­ment on Oc­to­ber 13.