JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, February 28, 2025

PSA, Imbert clash as TTRA ‘transfer’ letters sent to BIR, Customs workers

by

Derek Achong
245 days ago
20240628

The Court of Ap­peal has been asked to clar­i­fy whether it agreed to stay the con­tro­ver­sial op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of the long-tout­ed T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA), af­ter the Min­istry of Fi­nance is­sued let­ters to In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion (IRD) and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) staff, giv­ing them un­til Ju­ly 31 to de­cide whether they were will­ing to join the new body.

The move to seek clar­i­ty on the pre­cise terms of the stay, pur­port­ed­ly de­tailed by Ap­pel­late Judges Mark Mo­hammed, Char­maine Pem­ber­ton and Mi­ra Dean-Ar­mor­er when they grant­ed the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) leave to pur­sue a fi­nal ap­peal over the dis­missal of a law­suit over the pro­posed im­ple­men­ta­tion on June 4, arose af­ter the Ap­peal Court Reg­is­trar sub­se­quent­ly is­sued a writ­ten or­der re­flect­ing the oral de­ci­sion.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that on June 10, State at­tor­ney Svet­lana Dass wrote to the court’s ju­di­cial sup­port of­fi­cer (JSO) ques­tion­ing whether the writ­ten or­der con­tained an er­ror. Dass in­di­cat­ed that the ap­peal pan­el had seem­ing­ly grant­ed a stay over a sec­tion of the leg­is­la­tion es­tab­lish­ing the TTRA, which was chal­lenged by PSA mem­ber Ter­risa Dho­ray, un­til Sep­tem­ber 25.

How­ev­er, the writ­ten or­der in­di­cat­ed that the de­ci­sion by the court to re­ject Dho­ray’s ap­peal over the dis­missal of her sub­stan­tive law­suit over the move, de­liv­ered on May 28, was, in fact, stayed.

The fol­low­ing day, the writ­ten or­der was with­drawn and an­oth­er was is­sued in­di­cat­ing ex­plic­it­ly that the stay re­lat­ed to the Court of Ap­peal’s de­ci­sion on Dho­ray’s sub­stan­tive case. The Ap­peal Court Reg­is­trar sub­se­quent­ly con­firmed the terms of the cor­rect­ed or­der.

How­ev­er, lawyers for Dho­ray and the PSA, led by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, filed an ur­gent ap­pli­ca­tion for clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the ap­peal pan­el that ren­dered the de­ci­sion, af­ter the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Fi­nance is­sued the let­ters to the In­land Rev­enue and Cus­toms and Ex­cise staff, giv­ing them un­til the end of Ju­ly to de­cide if they would join the TTRA.

The let­ter, which was at­tached to the ap­pli­ca­tion, gave an out­line of Dho­ray’s case, in­clud­ing the dif­fer­ence of opin­ion over the terms of the stay grant­ed and the po­si­tion ad­vanced by the court.

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has there­fore been ad­vised by se­nior coun­sel that he is free to fix a dead­line date for the ex­er­cise of the op­tions un­der Sec­tion 18 of the act by pub­lic of­fi­cers who are el­i­gi­ble to do so,” it stat­ed.

It al­so in­di­cat­ed that staff who com­ply with the re­quest would be re­stored if the Privy Coun­cil even­tu­al­ly up­holds the ap­peal.

“Mind­ful of the fact that the ap­pel­lant has ob­tained per­mis­sion to ap­peal to the Privy Coun­cil, the Gov­ern­ment un­der­takes that should the ap­pel­lant pur­sue such an ap­peal and the Privy Coun­cil were to find that the act is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, the Gov­ern­ment will take all re­quired ac­tion to re­store all pub­lic of­fi­cers to the po­si­tion they were in pri­or to the ex­er­cise of their op­tions,” it stat­ed.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day, the PSA stat­ed cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that it felt the stay was over the im­ple­men­ta­tion and not the pre­vi­ous judg­ment.

“We are con­fi­dent that the tran­script of the hear­ing and the ex­tem­pore judg­ment that was de­liv­ered in open court will vin­di­cate our po­si­tion in this mat­ter and have hence ap­plied for the of­fi­cial tran­script of the court’s judg­ment,” it said.

“This ac­tion by the Gov­ern­ment is to­tal­ly in­con­sis­tent with the in­ten­tion and pur­pose of the court’s or­der and flies in the face of the rule of law,” it added.

The PSA said it was com­mit­ted to de­fend­ing the af­fect­ed pub­lic ser­vants.

“The PSA stands in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the work­ers of the BIR and CED and warns the Gov­ern­ment that it will not stand idly by and al­low it to tram­ple on the rights of the ag­griev­ed work­ers,” it said.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the par­ties were not giv­en a date for the hear­ing of the ap­pli­ca­tion up to late yes­ter­day.

In a re­lease last evening, how­ev­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert re­it­er­at­ed that his min­istry’s le­gal ad­vice in the mat­ter, as high­light­ed in the let­ter to the work­ers, was sound. How­ev­er, he again re­as­sured work­ers that should the Privy Coun­cil rule that the min­istry “will take all re­quired ac­tion to place pub­lic of­fi­cers back in their pre­vi­ous po­si­tions at both the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion should the Privy Coun­cil rule that the act is un­con­sti­tu­tion­al.”


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored