A prison of­fi­cer, who was re­in­stat­ed this year af­ter a 15-year le­gal bat­tle with the Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) over be­ing de­clared to have aban­doned her job af­ter miss­ing work for sev­er­al months due to in­jury and preg­nan­cy, has filed an­oth­er law­suit seek­ing her un­paid salary and ben­e­fits for the pe­ri­od.

The con­sti­tu­tion­al law­suit brought by Fa­vian­na Ga­jad­har, of Ari­ma, came up for hear­ing be­fore Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad on Thurs­day.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Seep­er­sad gave the par­ties strict dead­lines for fil­ing ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions in the case and set a tri­al date of No­vem­ber 1. He not­ed that he would give his judge­ment be­fore the end of the year.

“ I have no in­ten­tion for the mat­ter to be dragged out. The is­sues to be de­ter­mined are nar­row,” Seep­er­sad said.

“At some point in time, peo­ple de­serve a mea­sure of fi­nal­i­ty,” he added.

Ga­jad­har brought her first case against the com­mis­sion in 2010.

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Ga­jad­har, who joined the T&T Prison Ser­vice in 2000, suf­fered a back in­jury and was ab­sent from du­ty for ex­tend­ed pe­ri­ods be­tween 2004 and 2006.

Ga­jad­har got preg­nant dur­ing the pe­ri­od and sought to re­sume her du­ties three months af­ter her daugh­ter was born in June 2006.

She was barred by her su­per­vi­sor, who in­di­cat­ed that she could not re­sume her du­ties as she had not prop­er­ly ac­count­ed for the pe­ri­ods of her ab­sence.

While Ga­jad­har claimed that she sub­mit­ted her sick leave and ma­ter­ni­ty leave cer­tifi­cates, the com­mis­sion still de­clared that she had ef­fec­tive­ly re­signed from her post, ef­fec­tive June 2007, as she was ab­sent with­out leave be­tween April 2006 to then.

Ga­jad­har filed a ju­di­cial re­view case against the com­mis­sion, which was up­held by the High Court and the Court of Ap­peal, who or­dered it (the com­mis­sion) to re­con­sid­er.

The com­mis­sion re­con­sid­ered the is­sue in No­vem­ber 2017 and stood by its ini­tial de­ci­sion al­beit for a dif­fer­ent rea­son, an is­sue with Ga­jad­har’s ma­ter­ni­ty leave ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the Ma­ter­ni­ty Ben­e­fit Act.

Ga­jad­har brought an­oth­er law­suit against the sec­ond de­ci­sion, which was al­so up­held by both the High Court and the Court of Ap­peal.

The com­mis­sion con­sid­ered the case for the third time and re­in­stat­ed Ga­jad­har in April.

How­ev­er, Ga­jad­har was not paid her out­stand­ing salary and ben­e­fits for the past 15 years as the PSC in­struct­ed the Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er to do so by “clas­si­fy­ing “ her ab­sence from du­ty.

In her re­cent court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Ga­jad­har’s lawyers are con­tend­ing that the clas­si­fi­ca­tion re­quire­ment was in breach of the out­comes of her two past cas­es.