Former PTSC deputy manager cleared to challenge dismissal in court

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A for­mer deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) has been giv­en the green light to sue his for­mer em­ploy­er and its line min­istry over a de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate his con­tract af­ter re­duc­ing his func­tions.

Last Fri­day, High Court Judge West­min James grant­ed An­drew Nel­son leave to pur­sue a ju­di­cial re­view case over the pur­port­ed con­duct of the cor­po­ra­tion and the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to his court fil­ings, ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Nel­son joined the State com­pa­ny in 2024 af­ter re­tir­ing from a pri­vate com­pa­ny.

When his con­tract was about to ex­pire, it was re­newed for a fur­ther two years, end­ing in March 2027.

In Ju­ly 2025, a re­port was pub­lished by a week­ly news­pa­per al­leg­ing a tox­ic work en­vi­ron­ment at PTSC and call­ing for Nel­son’s re­moval.

Days af­ter the pub­li­ca­tion, Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our held a meet­ing with PTSC of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Nel­son and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) and the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU). Nel­son claimed that be­fore the meet­ing, Za­k­our ref­er­enced the re­port and sug­gest­ed that the al­le­ga­tions con­tained with­in were true.

Nel­son ten­dered his res­ig­na­tion but was asked to re­main in the post un­til a re­place­ment was se­lect­ed by PTSC’s then-new­ly ap­point­ed board of di­rec­tors.

In Sep­tem­ber 2025, Nel­son sus­pend­ed a labour of­fi­cer based on his al­leged re­fusal or fail­ure to per­form his du­ties.

Two days lat­er, Nel­son was in­formed of a di­rec­tive from the min­istry re­quir­ing its ap­proval for the sus­pen­sion or ter­mi­na­tion of PTSC staff.

Al­though Nel­son was al­leged­ly not aware of the di­rec­tive when he sus­pend­ed the work­er, he was placed on ad­min­is­tra­tive leave for breach­ing it (the di­rec­tive).

Nel­son claimed that the trade unions con­tin­ued to crit­i­cise him on so­cial me­dia un­til he was ter­mi­nat­ed on Feb­ru­ary 1.

In the law­suit, Nel­son’s lawyers, Kings­ley Wales­by and Stephanie Ra­jku­mar, claimed that the min­istry did not have the ju­ris­dic­tion to is­sue the di­rec­tive un­der the leg­is­la­tion that es­tab­lished the cor­po­ra­tion.

Through the law­suit, Nel­son is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions against the min­istry and cor­po­ra­tion as well as com­pen­sa­tion for the al­leged dam­age to his pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion.