Court rejects E-IDCOT attempt to block FOIA

Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

A High Court judge has re­ject­ed a po­si­tion by the Eco In­dus­tri­al De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny of To­ba­go (E-ID­COT) that it is ex­empt from the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA).

In a May 21 rul­ing, Jus­tice Maris­sa Robert­son said E-ID­COT, a spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­ny owned and fund­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), car­ries out a pub­lic func­tion and, there­fore, has ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy oblig­a­tions.

The mat­ter went be­fore ju­di­cial re­view fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by for­mer THA mi­nor­i­ty leader Kelvon Mor­ris about E-ID­COT’s un­will­ing­ness to re­veal de­tails about the Man­ta Lodge Ho­tel and Dive Cen­tre in Spey­side. Mor­ris had queried a fran­chise agree­ment signed be­tween Man­ta Lodge and Choice Ho­tels In­ter­na­tion­al Inc in 2024.

How­ev­er, E-ID­COT claimed that be­cause it was in­cor­po­rat­ed as a lim­it­ed-li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny, it was not sub­ject to pub­lic scruti­ny via the FOIA.

To­bag­on­ian and claimant Stephon Isaac took E-ID­COT to court over its re­fusal to re­lease in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to pro­cure­ment eval­u­a­tions, con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments and the fran­chise agree­ment.

The court or­dered E-ID­COT to re­con­sid­er the re­quest for in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ed to the fran­chise agree­ment in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 35 of the FOIA, in­clud­ing the re­quired bal­anc­ing ex­er­cise be­fore any de­ter­mi­na­tion on dis­clo­sure is made. It fur­ther di­rect­ed E-ID­COT to no­ti­fy the claimant of its de­ci­sion with­in 28 days of the or­der.

E-ID­COT was or­dered to pay 80 per cent of Isaac’s le­gal costs.

The judg­ment is ex­pect­ed to have sig­nif­i­cant im­pli­ca­tions for oth­er THA-owned spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­nies and pub­licly fund­ed cor­po­rate en­ti­ties op­er­at­ing in To­ba­go, par­tic­u­lar­ly in re­la­tion to com­pli­ance with trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty laws.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Mor­ris said he felt vin­di­cat­ed by the court’s rul­ing.

“I felt it was al­most out­ra­geous that an en­ti­ty spend­ing pub­lic mon­ey could even fath­om and con­ceive that they could hide be­hind the cloak of be­ing a lim­it­ed-li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny and not be trans­par­ent and ac­count­able to the peo­ple of T&T to whom they are spend­ing their mon­ey,” he said.

Mor­ris chas­tised Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine for not in­ter­ven­ing and avoid­ing a waste of tax­pay­ers’ re­sources.

“It is quite un­for­tu­nate they even at­tempt­ed to de­fend this po­si­tion. Tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey was spent hir­ing lawyers to de­fend this.

“A THA that con­sid­ers it­self to be ac­count­able and trans­par­ent would have no is­sue with a com­pa­ny that falls un­der its re­mit be­ing ac­count­able to the peo­ple.”

The for­mer as­sem­bly­man said he in­tends to write to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to pass on the judg­ment.

“It is my in­ten­tion to push this mat­ter even fur­ther. We have peo­ple who serve on boards in To­ba­go that are not ac­count­able to the In­tegri­ty of Pub­lic Life Act.”

Mean­while, an elat­ed Isaac told Guardian Me­dia, “This is a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty in THA. The rul­ing re­in­forces the prin­ci­ple that or­gan­i­sa­tions fund­ed by pub­lic mon­ey should not be in­su­lat­ed from pub­lic scruti­ny.”

He said tax­pay­ers have a le­git­i­mate in­ter­est in how pub­lic re­sources are al­lo­cat­ed and spent, adding that the le­gal prece­dent will en­cour­age greater trans­paren­cy and strength­en pub­lic trust in in­sti­tu­tions.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment To­ba­go Coun­cil leader Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis de­scribed the judg­ment as a “long over­due vic­to­ry” for good gov­er­nance on the is­land. She said she, too, was trou­bled by the le­gal stance tak­en by E-ID­COT.

“As a for­mer mem­ber of the EI­D­COT board of di­rec­tors, I find it both baf­fling and deeply con­cern­ing that any of­fi­cial with­in the THA, es­pe­cial­ly E-ID­COT, would ever at­tempt to po­si­tion a pub­lic en­ti­ty as be­ing ex­empt from the ac­count­abil­i­ty that To­bag­o­ni­ans de­serve and the FOIA de­mands.”

The ex-To­ba­go West MP said she has seen a trend of of­fi­cials dodg­ing when it comes to re­port­ing to To­bag­o­ni­ans on their wel­fare. She be­lieves the judg­ment is the ad­e­quate cor­rec­tive mea­sure and called on the THA and E-ID­COT to come clean with cit­i­zens.

“The era of hid­ing from pub­lic ac­count­abil­i­ty is over.”

Ef­forts to con­tact Au­gus­tine for a com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

Guardian Me­dia spoke to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of E-ID­COT who promised a re­sponse from an of­fi­cial, but none was forth­com­ing up to pub­li­ca­tion.

Isaac was rep­re­sent­ed by Christophe Ro­driguez and Thane Pierre, who were in­struct­ed by Adam Fer­nan­dez, while Kiel Tak­lals­ingh and Stephan Ramkissoon, in­struct­ed by Kristy Mo­han, rep­re­sent­ed E-ID­COT.