Derek Achong

An ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror that led to a man be­ing im­prop­er­ly de­tained for fail­ing to pay a traf­fic tick­et in 2018, is set to cost the State a lit­tle over $37,500. 

De­liv­er­ing a writ­ten judge­ment in the con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion brought by Patrick Awong, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad or­dered the com­pen­sa­tion as he ruled that his (Awong) con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were in­fringed when he was de­tained for eight hours for the tick­et, which he had al­ready paid. 

“In the in­stant case, us­ing a broad and per­va­sive de­f­i­n­i­tion of the mul­ti-di­men­sion­al na­ture of the right to pro­tec­tion of the law, this Court must con­clude that the Claimant’s right to pro­tec­tion of the law was in­fringed,” Seep­er­sad said.

“It was fun­da­men­tal­ly un­fair and patent­ly wrong that the Claimant was ar­rest­ed and de­prived of his lib­er­ty al­though he com­plied with the or­der of the Court and paid the im­posed fine,” he added. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Awong, the broth­er of Cou­va/Tabaquite Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man Hen­ry Awong, was is­sued the $1,000 tick­et in Feb­ru­ary 2015.

Awong ap­peared be­fore a mag­is­trate, plead­ed guilty to the traf­fic of­fence and was giv­en 14 days to pay the fine or face 14 days sim­ple im­pris­on­ment.

The fine was paid on the day of the dead­line.

Three years lat­er, Awong was ar­rest­ed and ac­cused of fail­ing to pay the fine. He spent eight hours in po­lice cus­tody and was re­leased af­ter his broth­er paid the mon­ey.

He was lat­er re­fund­ed.

In his judge­ment, Seep­er­sad ruled that the case high­light­ed the ur­gent need for the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of the sys­tem for pay­ing such tick­ets. 

“In a COVID-19 world where phys­i­cal con­tact has to be min­i­malised, the ad­min­is­tra­tive sys­tems of the State have to be op­er­at­ed with height­ened ac­cu­ra­cy and ef­fi­cien­cy,” Seep­er­sad said, as he sug­gest­ed that the sys­tem should have re­al-time up­dates when fines are paid. 

“It is un­fath­omable that there seems to be no link be­tween the mag­is­tra­cy and the Po­lice Ser­vice which would pro­vide for the re­al-time trans­mis­sion of such crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion. This cir­cum­stance is detri­men­tal to good pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion and can have dras­tic con­se­quences for the lib­er­ty of cit­i­zens,” he said, as he not­ed that there has been an in­crease in the use of fixed penal­ty tick­ets for of­fences un­der on­go­ing pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions for the pan­dem­ic. 

Seep­er­sad al­so took is­sue with the fact that some con­sti­tu­tion­al cas­es like the one brought by Awong had been politi­cised in the past. 

“It must be un­der­stood that con­sti­tu­tion­al vig­i­lance and the pro­tec­tion of en­trenched rights tran­scends the tran­sien­cy of po­lit­i­cal regimes and serves to pre­serve the en­dur­ing guar­an­tees and rights af­ford­ed to all cit­i­zens re­gard­less of race, re­li­gion, or po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence,” he said. 

As part of his de­ci­sion in the case, Seep­er­sad or­dered the State to pay Awong’s le­gal costs for bring­ing the law­suit. 

Awong was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, SC, Alvin Pariags­ingh, Dr Che Din­di­al and Alana Ram­baran, while Ste­fan Jaikaran and Am­ri­ta Ram­sook rep­re­sent­ed the State.