Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Coun­cil of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ACTT) has been or­dered to pay sig­nif­i­cant com­pen­sa­tion to the own­ers of a pri­vate ac­coun­tan­cy school that was forced to close due to what the High Court found were oner­ous and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry ac­cred­i­ta­tion re­quire­ments.

On Wednes­day, High Court Judge Robin Mo­hammed ruled in favour of Omardeen School of Ac­coun­tan­cy, up­hold­ing its con­sti­tu­tion­al case against the ACTT. The com­pen­sa­tion is to be as­sessed at a lat­er date.

In his land­mark judg­ment, Jus­tice Mo­hammed found that the coun­cil had dis­crim­i­nat­ed against the school for over a decade, lead­ing to the even­tu­al clo­sure of its three cam­pus­es in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, and Ch­agua­nas.

The le­gal dis­pute arose af­ter ACTT eval­u­a­tors re­port­ed­ly de­mand­ed statu­to­ry ap­provals for the school’s cam­pus­es be­tween 2008 and 2016. Al­though the coun­cil de­nied that ap­provals from the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), the Elec­tri­cal In­spec­torate, the Fire Ser­vice, and lo­cal health au­thor­i­ties were re­quired af­ter 2007, its 2010 pol­i­cy in­clud­ed the re­quire­ment.

The school claimed it spent $49 mil­lion ren­o­vat­ing its cam­pus­es to meet the ap­provals but was forced to close them be­tween 2014 and 2018 when it could no longer com­ply.

Through its lawyer Im­ran Khan, the school—owned by Wahid and So­haila Omardeen and their son Idrees—ar­gued that these re­quire­ments were ap­plied on­ly to its cam­pus­es and not to oth­er pri­vate ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions in sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. The claim cit­ed breach­es of the school’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to equal­i­ty be­fore the law and pro­tec­tion from un­equal treat­ment by a pub­lic au­thor­i­ty.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed ad­dressed whether the school’s de­lay in rais­ing the is­sue con­sti­tut­ed an abuse of process. He ruled the de­lay was not in­or­di­nate, not­ing that the school had re­ceived con­flict­ing re­spons­es from the coun­cil over the years.

“It would be un­just to hold the Claimant to a stan­dard of prompt­ness in com­menc­ing pro­ceed­ings when the very body against which it com­plains could not it­self iden­ti­fy with any cer­tain­ty when the de­ci­sion it re­lies on was made,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said. He added that the school’s griev­ances arose from a sus­tained pat­tern of un­equal treat­ment root­ed in a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion it could not have known about un­til years lat­er.

In up­hold­ing the dis­crim­i­na­tion claim, Jus­tice Mo­hammed not­ed: “While the Claimant bore that fi­nan­cial bur­den, its com­peti­tors op­er­at­ed freely from rent­ed premis­es with­out equiv­a­lent de­mands. The Claimant’s cam­pus­es closed one by one. Its busi­ness, built over four decades, was de­stroyed.”

The judge al­so found that the school’s rights to equal­i­ty be­fore the law and to a fair hear­ing were breached due to suc­ces­sive Cab­i­nets’ fail­ure to ap­point an Ap­peals Com­mit­tee for the coun­cil. The three-mem­ber com­mit­tee had not been ap­point­ed since the leg­is­la­tion es­tab­lish­ing the ACTT came in­to force in 2004.

Jus­tice Mo­hammed said the school must be com­pen­sat­ed for the loss­es it sus­tained be­cause of the coun­cil’s ac­tions. He al­so ruled that vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages were war­rant­ed due to the coun­cil’s con­duct.

“Through­out these pro­ceed­ings, the First De­fen­dant (ACTT) main­tained a po­si­tion com­pre­hen­sive­ly con­tra­dict­ed by its own con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous doc­u­ments, of­fered no ac­knowl­edge­ment of the wrong done to the Claimant, and ad­vanced no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the dif­fer­en­tial treat­ment met­ed out against it over a pe­ri­od of twelve years,” Jus­tice Mo­hammed said.

He added that an ad­di­tion­al award was need­ed to re­flect the grav­i­ty of the breach­es, vin­di­cate the school’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights, and send a clear sig­nal that pub­lic au­thor­i­ties charged with statu­to­ry func­tions will be held ac­count­able.

As part of his judg­ment, Jus­tice Mo­hammed gave the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion 120 days to for­mu­late reg­u­la­tions for the coun­cil and ad­vise the Pres­i­dent on ap­point­ments for the Ap­peals Com­mit­tee. The com­mit­tee must es­tab­lish its rules with­in 60 days of ap­point­ment.

The school was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Saa­ji­da Nar­ine. ACTT was rep­re­sent­ed by Aadam Ho­sein, while Ji­nai Chong Sing, Zara Smith and Fazana Ali rep­re­sent­ed the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.