High Court dismisses PCA lawsuit over salary downgrade

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

A de­ci­sion by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) to rec­om­mend a re­duc­tion in the salaries of the next Di­rec­tor and Deputy Di­rec­tor of the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty (PCA) has been up­held.

In a judg­ment de­liv­ered on Tues­day, Jus­tice Frank Seep­er­sad dis­missed the law­suit brought by the PCA and its in­cum­bent Di­rec­tor David West and Deputy Di­rec­tor Michelle Solomon-Baksh.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed com­plaints over the method­ol­o­gy em­ployed by the PCA in mak­ing the rec­om­men­da­tion in its 120th re­port, which was sub­mit­ted in 2024 and ap­proved by the then-Cab­i­net.

“This court is res­olute in its view that the de­fen­dant (SRC) en­gaged in a re­view which was char­ac­terised by rea­son­able­ness, pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness and ra­tio­nal­i­ty,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“The court is of the view that the process­es en­gaged ac­cord­ed with best prac­tice and in­dus­try stan­dards,” he added.

West and Solomon-Baksh’s cur­rent re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages are based on the SRC’s 98th Re­port dat­ed No­vem­ber 2013.

In its 113th Re­port in Oc­to­ber 2022, the SRC not­ed that it was await­ing a job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise and as­so­ci­at­ed com­pen­sa­tion sur­vey by the Per­son­nel De­part­ment in re­la­tion to sev­er­al pub­lic po­si­tions un­der its purview.

In its 117th Re­port in May 2023, the SRC con­sid­ered the re­sults of the re­view process and rec­om­mend­ed that the salary of the Di­rec­tor be de­creased from $38,540 per month to $33,700 and from $33,570 to $29,100 for the Deputy Di­rec­tor.

The de­crease was rec­om­mend­ed to take ef­fect from April 2020.

That re­port was re­ject­ed by Par­lia­ment due to anom­alies which led to a rec­om­mend­ed re­duc­tion in the salaries of sev­er­al pub­lic of­fice hold­ers.

In its 120th re­port, the SRC af­firmed the re­sults of the pre­vi­ous re­view and still rec­om­mend­ed an ef­fec­tive de­crease in their salaries.

The SRC main­tained its rec­om­men­da­tion that their salaries be down­grad­ed from 2020 as sug­gest­ed in its 117th Re­port.

How­ev­er, it rec­om­mend­ed that their down­grad­ed salaries be in­creased from $33,700 to $37,005 for Di­rec­tor and from $29,100 to $31,954 for Deputy Di­rec­tor, ef­fec­tive 2023.

The in­creas­es did not su­per­sede the pre­vi­ous re­duc­tion, mean­ing that the salaries for the po­si­tions were ef­fec­tive­ly de­creased.

How­ev­er, the SRC rec­om­mend­ed that the duo would main­tain their salaries while they re­main in of­fice and that the changes would on­ly be ap­plied to their even­tu­al suc­ces­sors or if they demit of­fice and are reap­point­ed.

The PCA and the duo filed the case al­leg­ing un­fair­ness, pro­ce­dur­al ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and a lack of prop­er con­sul­ta­tion.

In his judg­ment, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­ject­ed com­plaints over the lev­el of con­sul­ta­tion af­ford­ed to West and Solomon-Baksh. He sug­gest­ed that the SRC’s po­si­tion was not ma­te­ri­al­ly un­fair.

“If this court were to hold that the claimants here­in are en­ti­tled to be in­ter­viewed and con­sult­ed in the man­ner which they out­lined, such a con­clu­sion would im­pose oner­ous fi­nan­cial and hu­man re­source oblig­a­tions up­on the Com­mis­sion as it would log­i­cal­ly have to ex­tend same to the hold­ers of all 325 of­fices which fall with­in the re­mit of the Com­mis­sion,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

He al­so stat­ed that a salary de­crease af­ter the re­view was a fore­see­able pos­si­bil­i­ty.

“The na­ture of a com­pre­hen­sive re­view, in this court’s opin­ion, in­her­ent­ly sug­gests that re­mu­ner­a­tion, terms and con­di­tions could be var­ied or al­tered, ei­ther up­wards or down­wards,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

“Re­mu­ner­a­tion is al­ways a sen­si­tive and emo­tive is­sue, but em­ploy­ees have no right or priv­i­lege to be paid more for per­for­mance of the du­ties of the po­si­tion than the em­ploy­er is pre­pared to pay based on the fair and ob­jec­tive worth of the par­tic­u­lar con­tri­bu­tion,” he added.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so re­ject­ed com­plaints over the SRC us­ing a dif­fer­ent pro­ce­dure for as­sess­ing the po­si­tions than it did in pre­vi­ous re­ports.

“Fair­ness is not syn­ony­mous with rigid­i­ty; its con­tent is in­her­ent­ly con­tex­tu­al and must re­main suf­fi­cient­ly flex­i­ble to ac­com­mo­date ad­vances in pro­fes­sion­al stan­dards, de­vel­op­ments in eval­u­a­tive method­olo­gies and the prac­ti­cal re­al­i­ties con­fronting mod­ern pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion,” he said.

Stat­ing that the SRC has a dif­fi­cult task of achiev­ing con­sis­ten­cy, pro­por­tion­al­i­ty, fair­ness and eq­ui­ty across a broad spec­trum of con­sti­tu­tion­al and statu­to­ry of­fi­cers, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said: “The ef­fec­tive dis­charge of this re­spon­si­bil­i­ty nec­es­sar­i­ly re­quires the adop­tion of ob­jec­tive method­olo­gies ca­pa­ble of pro­duc­ing co­her­ent, prin­ci­pled and con­sis­tent out­comes across its en­tire re­mit.”

De­spite find­ing that the case lacked mer­it, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad or­dered the par­ties to bear their own le­gal costs.

Con­tact­ed af­ter the judg­ment was de­liv­ered, West did not rule out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an ap­peal.

“The PCA will have a con­fer­ence with Se­nior Coun­sel to de­ter­mine the next step, if any,” West said.

In a state­ment, Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Dr Daryl Din­di­al, who serves as the SRC’s sec­re­tary, said he was not sur­prised by the out­come.

“I main­tain that the SRC has con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed by their ac­tions, that every as­pect of the job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise met the high­est lev­els of qual­i­ty as­sur­ance, pro­ce­dur­al fair­ness, stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, trans­paren­cy, and the use of re­li­able and valid mar­ket da­ta,” Din­di­al said, as he not­ed that a world-renowned eval­u­a­tion method­ol­o­gy was utilised.

“I am there­fore hope­ful that every of­fice hold­er un­der the purview of the SRC is com­fort­ed by this judg­ment,” he added.

The PCA, West and Solomon-Baksh were rep­re­sent­ed by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, An­tho­ny Bul­lock, and Im­ran Ali.

The SRC was rep­re­sent­ed by Ja­son Mootoo, SC, Tama­ra Toolsie and Mi­ran­da Julien. The Cab­i­net was rep­re­sent­ed by Shali­ni Singh and Vin­cent Jar­dine.