A for­mer ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of a re­gion­al non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO) has lost her law­suit over its re­fusal to re­new her con­tract. 

De­liv­er­ing a judg­ment, yes­ter­day morn­ing, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed dis­missed the breach of con­tract case, in which Pa­tri­cia Aquing was seek­ing US$242,258.06 in com­pen­sa­tion from the Caribbean Wa­ter and Waste­water As­so­ci­a­tion. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, be­tween Ju­ly 2015 and Ju­ly 2018, Aquing served as a con­sul­tant in the role of ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

The as­so­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents wa­ter, waste­water and sol­id waste pro­fes­sion­als in the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors re­gion­al­ly, seeks to pro­mote train­ing to en­sure that such in­dus­tries have ad­e­quate trained man­pow­er and to en­cour­age the im­ple­men­ta­tion of tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vances. 

Af­ter her ini­tial three-year con­tract ex­pired, Aquing was al­lowed to con­tin­ue in the post while hold­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions over a pos­si­ble re­new­al. 

In May 2019, her ser­vices were ter­mi­nat­ed with­out cause and she was paid one month’s salary in lieu of no­tice. 

Aquing filed the law­suit in which she claimed that her im­plied con­tract was im­prop­er­ly ter­mi­nat­ed and that she was en­ti­tled to a three-year re­new­al based on the as­sur­ances al­leged­ly giv­en by the as­so­ci­a­tion’s for­mer pres­i­dent. 

She claimed that she was en­ti­tled to US$130,758.06, which rep­re­sents the salary and ben­e­fits she would have re­ceived had she been al­lowed to com­plete a sec­ond three-year term. She al­so con­tend­ed that she was en­ti­tled to US$112,500 in bonus­es, which were cal­cu­lat­ed based on the as­so­ci­a­tion’s earn­ings af­ter ac­tu­al op­er­a­tional ex­pens­es. 

The as­so­ci­a­tion, which was rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Vivek Lakhan-Joseph and Ca­ri­na Jailal, de­nied any wrong­do­ing as it claimed that her con­tract was not re­newed as the as­so­ci­a­tion no longer want­ed a con­sul­tant in the role. 

In her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Mo­hammed ruled that Aquing was not en­ti­tled to an au­to­mat­ic re­new­al as claimed. 

While she found that the as­so­ci­a­tion should not have ter­mi­nat­ed Aquing with­out no­tice, Jus­tice Mo­hammed stat­ed that such ac­tion did not in­val­i­date the de­ci­sion. 

“The pay­ment of one month’s salary in ef­fect was the sum she would have re­ceived if she had worked dur­ing the pe­ri­od of the one month’s no­tice,” she said. 

Deal­ing with the bonus­es, Jus­tice Mo­hammed re­ject­ed Aquing’s cal­cu­la­tions in favour of the ones sub­mit­ted by the as­so­ci­a­tion. 

“The fig­ures which the De­fen­dant used to cal­cu­late the bonus pay­ments due to the Claimant were more re­li­able as they were based on in­de­pen­dent fi­nan­cial state­ments and not the self-serv­ing cal­cu­la­tions of the Claimant,” the judge said. 

She not­ed that the as­so­ci­a­tion ad­mit­ted that it still owed her a bal­ance of US$55.69 for her bonus­es un­der her ini­tial con­tract. 

In dis­miss­ing the case, Jus­tice Mo­hammed or­dered Aquing to pay the as­so­ci­a­tion’s le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the law­suit. 

Aquing was rep­re­sent­ed by Mar­tin George and Ke­shavi Khoor­ban.