A pub­lic ser­vant who took the Min­istry of Labour to court af­ter she al­leged her em­ploy­ment rights had been un­fair­ly vi­o­lat­ed was yes­ter­day award­ed $150,000 in com­pen­sato­ry dam­ages.

She was al­so grant­ed $100,000 in vin­di­ca­to­ry dam­ages.

Mar­sha Ram­lal filed a ju­di­cial re­view to chal­lenge the Labour Min­istry’s de­ci­sion to clas­si­fy her leave from 2007 to 2014 as un­paid—as she ar­gued this clas­si­fi­ca­tion was im­prop­er, un­fair, and con­trary to the as­sur­ances she had re­ceived from the min­istry. Ram­lal, who pre­vi­ous­ly worked as a Health and Safe­ty Of­fi­cer with the min­istry and then at the Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) Agency, sought to have this de­ci­sion re­viewed and over­turned on the ba­sis that it af­fect­ed her tenure, se­nior­i­ty, pen­sion, and oth­er en­ti­tle­ments as a pub­lic ser­vant.

In hand­ing down his de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad sought to high­light the fail­ures in the ad­min­is­tra­tive process­es and the breach of Ram­lal’s le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tions.

Ram­lal’s griev­ance cen­tred around the Labour Min­istry’s de­ci­sion to clas­si­fy her leave from 2007 to 2014 as leave of ab­sence from du­ty with­out pay.

She claimed that she had been promised her leave would be recog­nised on pub­lic pol­i­cy grounds, which would pre­serve her con­ti­nu­ity and sta­tus with­in the pub­lic ser­vice.

In ad­di­tion, she claimed her ap­point­ment let­ter to the po­si­tion of Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer I in the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries was de­layed by over four years, af­fect­ing her ca­reer pro­gres­sion and ben­e­fits, and that the min­istry’s ac­tions and de­lays had breached her right to pro­tec­tion un­der the law and the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice.

She said due to these fail­ures, her le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion to main­tain her pub­lic ser­vice sta­tus and en­joy the as­so­ci­at­ed ben­e­fits was breached, lead­ing to se­ri­ous fi­nan­cial and pro­fes­sion­al dis­ad­van­tages.

De­liv­er­ing the judg­ment oral­ly as he wad­ed in­to sev­er­al ar­eas where breach­es had oc­curred, Seep­er­sad said on the fail­ure of time­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness, “The fail­ure to time­ly de­liv­er the claimant’s let­ter of ap­point­ment dat­ed 14th De­cem­ber 2015, was patent­ly un­fair and the time which elapsed be­tween its gen­er­a­tion and the date it was even­tu­al­ly de­liv­ered was ex­ces­sive and un­rea­son­able.”

Re­gard­ing mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion and the need for sys­temic re­form, he said, “The ar­cha­ic man­ner in which many min­istries and gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies op­er­ate demon­strates a de­cid­ed dis­con­nect and de­tach­ment with moder­ni­ty. There is a re­strict­ed flow of in­for­ma­tion, and the ef­fi­cient de­liv­ery of core ser­vices has not been pri­ori­tised. Pub­lic sec­tor re­form is ur­gent­ly re­quired.”

Seep­er­sad chas­tised the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties as he ex­am­ined the breach of Ram­lal’s right to pro­tec­tion un­der the law.

He said, “The right to pro­tec­tion of the law ... must af­ford each per­son pro­tec­tion against the ar­bi­trary ex­er­cise of pow­er, ir­ra­tional­i­ty, fun­da­men­tal un­fair­ness, and un­rea­son­able­ness in re­la­tion to the dis­charge of au­thor­i­ty by pub­lic of­fi­cials.

“The per­sis­tent de­lay and in­ac­tion, as re­flect­ed in the fail­ure to ad­dress the claimant’s sta­tus and the in­ad­e­quate com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties, high­lights that there was a gross­ly neg­li­gent ap­proach and/or de­lib­er­ate omis­sion to dis­charge its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.”