Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A High Court Judge has or­dered over $500,000 in com­pen­sa­tion for a woman, who was de­nied a dis­abil­i­ty grant be­cause she was strand­ed abroad due to the clo­sure of this coun­try’s bor­ders dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Jus­tice Kevin Ram­cha­ran on Thurs­day de­liv­ered a judg­ment up­hold­ing the law­suit brought by Ka­mal Se­u­nar­ine, of Freeport, against the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al over breach of her con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tec­tion of the law.  

Se­u­nar­ine, how­ev­er, who was rep­re­sent­ed by Anand Ram­lo­gan, of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, would not ben­e­fit from her le­gal vic­to­ry as she died in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, while await­ing the out­come of her case. 

The com­pen­sa­tion would now have to be paid to her es­tate to be even­tu­al­ly dis­trib­uted to her rel­a­tives.  

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, Se­u­nar­ine, an in­sur­ance agent, left Trinidad to vis­it her daugh­ter in New York. 

A lit­tle over a week af­ter ar­riv­ing, she ex­pe­ri­enced se­vere chest pains and was rushed to a hos­pi­tal. 

She was in­formed that she had sig­nif­i­cant blood ves­sel block­ages and re­quired quadru­ple by­pass surgery. 

She un­der­went the ma­jor surgery in March 2020 and was ad­vised to re­turn to her daugh­ter’s home to rest and re­cov­er. 

The fol­low­ing month, she con­tract­ed Covid-19 and suf­fered a ma­jor stroke, which left her wheel­chair-bound. 

She at­tempt­ed to re­turn home but could not do so due to the clo­sure of the coun­try’s bor­ders in the ear­ly stages of the pan­dem­ic. 

In Oc­to­ber 2020, she ap­plied to the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty for an ex­emp­tion, but it took four months for her to be grant­ed ap­proval to re­turn to Trinidad and To­ba­go. 

In June 2021, Se­u­nar­ine ap­plied for a dis­abil­i­ty as­sis­tance grant as she lost her job dur­ing her ab­sence abroad and could no longer work be­cause of her med­ical con­di­tions. 

She was in­formed that the lo­cal pub­lic as­sis­tance board had de­nied her ap­pli­ca­tion on the ba­sis that she was out of the coun­try for one year be­fore mak­ing it (the ap­pli­ca­tion). 

Se­u­nar­ine at­tempt­ed to ex­plain to of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices that her ab­sence was not in­ten­tion­al but was forced to file the law­suit af­ter she failed to re­ceive a sat­is­fac­to­ry re­sponse by 2024. 

Her lawyers claimed that while she was pur­su­ing her ap­pli­ca­tion, she suf­fered kid­ney fail­ure and had to re­ceive dial­y­sis. They al­leged that she had to seek fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from friends and rel­a­tives as her sav­ings were de­plet­ed on med­ical fees. 

In the law­suit, her lawyers crit­i­cised the min­istry’s strict ad­her­ence to the Pub­lic As­sis­tance Act, which pre­scribed the time lim­it re­quire­ment. 

“It un­der­mines the prin­ci­ples of fair­ness, eq­ui­ty and pro­por­tion­al­i­ty that ought to guide the ex­er­cise of ad­min­is­tra­tive dis­cre­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in cas­es in­volv­ing vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als de­pen­dent on Gov­ern­ment as­sis­tance,” they said. 

“There is a com­plete dis­re­gard to the fun­da­men­tal pur­pose of dis­abil­i­ty as­sis­tance, which is to pro­vide es­sen­tial sup­port to vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als to ful­ly sup­port them­selves,” they added. 

In his judg­ment, de­liv­ered via email, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran agreed. 

“The pur­pose of the res­i­dence re­quire­ment is no doubt to en­sure that per­sons who have been ha­bit­u­al­ly liv­ing abroad do not come to the coun­try and then utilise the State’s re­sources im­me­di­ate­ly. This clear­ly was not the case here,” Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran said. 

He al­so crit­i­cised the act­ing di­rec­tor of the Min­istry’s So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion, who tes­ti­fied in the case and sug­gest­ed that Se­u­nar­ine should have at­tempt­ed to re­turn to the coun­try soon­er than she did, de­spite her med­ical con­di­tions. 

In as­sess­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion for Se­u­nar­ine, Jus­tice Ram­cha­ran ruled that she was en­ti­tled to $200,000 for the dis­tress and in­con­ve­nience she en­dured. 

He al­so or­dered $110,000, which rep­re­sents the mon­ey she would have re­ceived if she had been grant­ed the $2,000 a month grant be­tween when she made the ap­pli­ca­tion in 2021 and her even­tu­al death last month. 

He or­dered $200,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages and or­dered the State to pay her le­gal costs for pur­su­ing the lit­i­ga­tion. 

Se­u­nar­ine al­so has a pend­ing case over the re­fusal of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice to re­lease in­ves­tiga­tive re­ports in­to a rob­bery and ar­son at­tack on her home in 2019, in which her two dogs were killed. 

She sought the in­for­ma­tion un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) af­ter learn­ing that a man, who was ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to rob­bing a su­per­mar­ket around the time of the at­tack, ad­mit­ted be­ing paid $10,000 to set her home on fire. 

In June last year, High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad grant­ed her leave to pur­sue the case. 

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, Se­u­nar­ine’s daugh­ter Kavi­ta, who now lives in Cana­da, de­scribed the out­come as bit­ter­sweet.

De­scrib­ing what tran­spired in her moth­er’s case as a grave in­jus­tice, she ques­tioned whether her moth­er was dis­crim­i­nat­ed against.

“Was the gov­ern­ment not un­der­stand­ing of her sit­u­a­tion be­cause of her gen­der, name and so­cial pro­file?” she said.

She ex­pressed hope that her moth­er’s case may in­spire oth­ers who had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences to pur­sue sim­i­lar ac­tion.

Se­u­nar­ine was al­so rep­re­sent­ed by Aasha Ram­lal, Mau­reen Rad­hay and Ganesh Sa­roop. The AG’s Of­fice was rep­re­sent­ed by Mon­i­ca Smith, Nicol Yee Fung, and Rad­ha Sookdeo.