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.”