Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

A High Court judge has or­dered the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) to pay ben­e­fits to a for­mer con­tract work­er six years af­ter his ser­vices were ter­mi­nat­ed.

In an oral rul­ing yes­ter­day fol­low­ing a two-day tri­al, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad ex­pressed dis­qui­et at the “ad hoc” arrange­ment be­tween the claimant, Mervyn Pierre, who was em­ployed as a man­ag­er, and WASA.

Pierre had sought a pay­ment of $2,238,652.47 in his law­suit for breach of con­tract.

Ev­i­dence was led in the tri­al about oral con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments, lengthy pe­ri­ods be­tween the ex­e­cu­tion of con­tracts, and un­spec­i­fied terms and con­di­tions of work. Pierre had tes­ti­fied and called two wit­ness­es while WASA brought two wit­ness­es.

Seep­er­sad ac­cept­ed the claimant’s case that he was on an oral fixed-termed con­tract for the pe­ri­od Au­gust 4, 2012, to Au­gust 3, 2014, and Au­gust 4, 2014, to Au­gust 3, 2017. He re­ject­ed the de­fen­dant’s case that there was a month-to-month arrange­ment with the claimant as there was no doc­u­ment to sup­port that claim and the ev­i­dence sug­gest­ed an ad-hoc arrange­ment was in place.

“It is rather con­cern­ing that no doc­u­men­tary ev­i­dence or record of this oral arrange­ment was put be­fore the court and it is dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how the Au­thor­i­ty would have con­tin­ued an em­ploy­ment re­la­tion­ship with the claimant in the ab­sence of some clear doc­u­men­ta­tion as to what the op­er­a­tive terms and con­di­tions were,” Seep­er­sad said.

He added that it was odd and pe­cu­liar that Pierre’s first con­tact in Ju­ly 2008 made pro­vi­sions for a salary, va­ca­tion and gra­tu­ity, and when it con­clud­ed he en­tered in­to a “neb­u­lous sort of arrange­ment” with no op­er­a­tive and gov­ern­ing terms. How­ev­er, a year and near­ly six months af­ter the sec­ond con­tract came to an end, the sec­ond con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed and it re­flect­ed the terms of the first con­tract.

He ac­cept­ed that Pierre en­tered in­to the third con­tract on the same terms and con­di­tions as the pre­vi­ous con­tract, but re­ject­ed his ev­i­dence that he was in dis­cus­sions with WASA of­fi­cials for the in­creased salary that unionised work­ers were be­ing paid at that time.

How­ev­er, the judge said the ev­i­dence had in­stilled a sig­nif­i­cant de­gree of dis­qui­et in the court’s mind. He asked why WASA per­mit­ted an ad-hoc con­trac­tu­al arrange­ment to op­er­ate and not­ed that no at­ten­tion was paid to the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of con­tract­ed em­ploy­ment.

Adding that the lev­el of ad­min­is­tra­tive dys­func­tion and malaise was cause for wor­ry and con­cern, Seep­er­sad said, “If the au­thor­i­ty op­er­at­ed then and con­tin­ues to op­er­ate in cir­cum­stances where there are no clear and def­i­nite con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments be­tween it­self and var­i­ous em­ploy­ees, that type of arrange­ments can nev­er lend it­self to ef­fi­cien­cy and ul­ti­mate­ly the woes that are ex­pe­ri­enced by nu­mer­ous cit­i­zens in this coun­try as it re­lates to the ser­vice that the au­thor­i­ty pro­vides will con­tin­ue to be ex­pe­ri­enced and there can be no mean­ing­ful ad­dress­ing of that sce­nario un­less you get your house in or­der and the au­thor­i­ty op­er­ates with a mea­sure of ef­fi­cien­cy and con­sis­ten­cy.”

The judge or­dered in­ter­est on the sums to be paid. He found that the fairest and most pro­por­tion­ate or­der was that the par­ties bear their own costs.

Pierre was rep­re­sent­ed by Navin­dra Ram­nanan and Nekeisha Clarke while Se­nior Coun­sel Ker­wyn Gar­cia and Vish­ma Jais­ingh rep­re­sent­ed WASA.