Hav­ing filed law­suits against the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T for wrong­ful dis­missal, 11 fired lec­tur­ers are now plan­ning to sue the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of T&T.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, fired lec­tur­er Dr Ku­mar Ma­habir said his le­gal team head­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan (SC) was in the process of fil­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter against the ACTT, af­ter it failed to in­ves­ti­gate claims that an un­cer­ti­fied, un­qual­i­fied per­son was hired by UTT to teach an­thro­po­log­i­cal stud­ies af­ter Ma­habir was dis­missed.

“I was re­placed by an un­qual­i­fied lec­tur­er. I have been through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act ask­ing the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. They are play­ing games. They said that the first se­mes­ter from Sep­tem­ber to De­cem­ber 2018 has al­ready passed. We asked the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil to act in this mat­ter and they are drag­ging their feet so we are fil­ing a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter,” Ma­habir said.

Asked how they had been cop­ing since the re­trench­ment, Ma­habir said he has a pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny and some of his col­leagues were now work­ing part-time.

“Some are giv­ing ex­tra lessons and some are un­em­ployed. It is dif­fi­cult now to find jobs in the coun­try be­cause every or­gan­i­sa­tion is re­trench­ing,” Ma­habir said.

He added that Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion An­tho­ny Gar­cia said 244 UTT work­ers would have been re­trenched but this has not hap­pened.

“Since Jan­u­ary 2018, he said UTT needs $18.5 mil­lion to pay off sev­er­ance if they are re­trenched. My ques­tion is where is he go­ing to get that mon­ey?” Ma­habir asked.

Ma­habir said the ac­tion in­volv­ing the wrong­ful fir­ing from the Cen­tre for Ed­u­ca­tion Pro­grammes as part of the uni­ver­si­ty’s stat­ed “re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise” will be ad­dressed in the court. He said as the on­ly qual­i­fied an­thro­pol­o­gist with a doc­tor­al de­gree from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da, he could have been re­lo­cat­ed to the Acad­e­my for Arts, Let­ters, Cul­ture and Pub­lic Af­fairs in­stead of be­ing fired. He al­so added that UTT breached its own hu­man re­sources pol­i­cy out­lined in its of­fi­cial pub­lished hand­book.

“In Pol­i­cy Ref No HR 17, Clause v, the Sep­a­ra­tion Pol­i­cy states: ‘Where it is de­ter­mined that the uni­ver­si­ty is over­staffed in any area of its op­er­a­tions and the sur­plus staff can­not be rea­son­ably em­ployed in an­oth­er area, the uni­ver­si­ty will con­sid­er re­trench­ment as a fi­nal op­tion,’” Ma­habir said.

He added uni­ver­sal in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions pro­ce­dures dic­tate that dis­missals should be done on­ly af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ee, pri­or no­tice of dis­missal, pre­sen­ta­tion of ev­i­dence by the em­ploy­er, an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the em­ploy­ee to re­spond, rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the em­ploy­ee by an at­tor­ney, no­tice of dis­missal, a right to ap­peal and a right to ju­di­cial re­view. How­ev­er, Ma­habir said none of this was done.

Ear­li­er this year, act­ing chair­man of the UTT’s board of gov­er­nors, Pro­fes­sor Clement Im­bert, said the dis­missed work­ers got 45 days’ no­tice. He al­so said the UTT had no mon­ey and could not ab­sorb any of the work­ers in­to any oth­er pro­gramme at the time of the dis­missals.