The Om­buds­man of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Ra­j­man­lal Joseph, has ini­ti­at­ed sum­ma­ry crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings at the Port of Spain Dis­trict Court against Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion, Kathy Ann Mills-Mark, fol­low­ing her fail­ure to at­tend hear­ings to which she was sum­moned, con­trary to Sec­tion 10 of the Om­buds­man Act Chap­ter 2:52.

The Of­fice of the Om­buds­man con­firmed the le­gal ac­tion in an of­fi­cial state­ment, to­day, Mon­day 22 Au­gust 2022, in which it re­mind­ed pub­lic of­fi­cers they ob­lig­at­ed un­der the law to com­ply with sum­mons­es from the Om­buds­man or face the pos­si­bly of le­gal ac­tion, fines or even jail time.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, the Of­fice of the Om­buds­man had is­sued two sum­mons­es—on April 1st and April 4th, 2022—re­quir­ing the Cor­po­ra­tion CEO to give ev­i­dence in two sep­a­rate com­plaints against the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion at en­quiry sched­uled for Wednes­day, April 20.

The Of­fice of the Om­buds­man notes: “the first hear­ing per­tained to a de­lay in the Cor­po­ra­tion ad­dress­ing a com­plaint about the con­struc­tion of il­le­gal struc­tures on a gov­ern­ment re­serve.  The sec­ond hear­ing was in re­la­tion to the Cor­po­ra­tion’s de­lay in ad­dress­ing a com­plaint of the block­age of the road­way at Git­tens Street, Tacarigua.”

The re­lease goes on to ex­plain that when the hear­ings were con­vened at 11:00 am and 11:30 am re­spec­tive­ly as sched­uled, CEO Mills-Mark failed to ap­pear and checks with the Of­fice of the Om­buds­man’s Reg­istry con­firmed that no ex­cuse was for­ward­ed from Ms. Mills-Mark or the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to ex­plain her ab­sence. 

“To date, the Of­fice of the Om­buds­man has not re­ceived any law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or ex­cuse for the ab­sence of Ms. Mills-Mark at the hear­ings to which she was sum­moned,” the re­lease stat­ed.

“Since his ap­point­ment on May 19, 2021, the Om­buds­man has con­duct­ed 102 hear­ings in re­la­tion to 210 mat­ters un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Should pub­lic au­thor­i­ties fail to re­spond to the Om­buds­man’s re­quests for in­for­ma­tion in the con­duct of his in­ves­ti­ga­tions, he shall so ex­er­cise the ju­ris­dic­tion re­posed in his Of­fice by virtue of Sec­tion 97 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the Of­fice of the Om­buds­man said.

“Un­der Sec­tion 97 (1), the Om­buds­man shall have the pow­ers of the High Court to sum­mon wit­ness­es to ap­pear be­fore him and to com­pel them to give ev­i­dence on oath and to pro­duce doc­u­ments rel­e­vant to the pro­ceed­ings be­fore him,” it not­ed.

The state­ment added: “Un­der Sec­tion 10 of the Om­buds­man Act 2:52, a per­son is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine or to im­pris­on­ment for six months who with­out law­ful jus­ti­fi­ca­tion or ex­cuse re­fus­es or wil­ful­ly fails to com­ply with any law­ful re­quire­ment of the Om­buds­man or any oth­er per­son un­der the Om­buds­man Act.  Pub­lic of­fi­cials are there­fore re­mind­ed that prompt col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Of­fice of the Om­buds­man is im­per­a­tive in avoid­ing such mea­sures be­ing tak­en to se­cure their co­op­er­a­tion.”