Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Two busi­ness­men and a busi­ness­woman have won their law­suits over de­lays in de­cid­ing their long-out­stand­ing firearm user’s li­cence (FUL) ap­pli­ca­tions.

High Court Judges Devin­dra Ram­per­sad, Ricky Rahim, and Ava­son Quin­lan-Williams re­cent­ly up­held the sep­a­rate cas­es brought by the en­tre­pre­neurs, whose iden­ti­ties were with­held due to po­ten­tial se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns raised by their lawyers.

All three ap­plied for FULs, were grant­ed pro­vi­sion­al FULs, suc­cess­ful­ly un­der­went firearm com­pe­ten­cy train­ing, and sub­mit­ted their cer­tifi­cates to the Firearms Per­mit Unit.

One of the busi­ness­men from Ch­agua­nas first ap­plied over a decade ago, while the oth­er busi­ness­man from Pe­nal and the busi­ness­woman from Cara­pichaima ap­plied in mid-2021.

While their lawyers all ad­mit­ted that there was no dead­line for de­cid­ing a FUL ap­pli­ca­tion un­der the Firearms Act, they sug­gest­ed that it should be done with­in a rea­son­able time.

The judges all agreed, as they is­sued a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the de­lays and gave dead­lines for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher to de­cide their ap­pli­ca­tions.

They al­so or­dered the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to pay the le­gal costs in­curred by the trio in pur­su­ing their cas­es.

Their suc­cess in the lit­i­ga­tion does not mean that they would now au­to­mat­i­cal­ly re­ceive the FULs, as Hare­wood-Christo­pher may still ex­er­cise her dis­cre­tion to re­ject their ap­pli­ca­tions.

Since be­ing ap­point­ed to the post in 2023, Hare­wood-Christo­pher’s of­fice has been in­un­dat­ed with lit­i­ga­tion over long out­stand­ing FUL ap­pli­ca­tions, most of which pre­date her tenure.

The lit­i­ga­tion came while the TTPS was do­ing a ma­jor au­dit in­to the is­su­ing of FULs.

While the re­sults of the au­dit were not made pub­lic, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed that sig­nif­i­cant anom­alies in the pro­ce­dure for is­su­ing FULs were un­earthed.

Many of the cas­es have been de­ter­mined, with Hare­wood-Christo­pher be­ing giv­en dead­lines for ren­der­ing de­ci­sions.

The busi­ness­man from Ch­agua­nas was rep­re­sent­ed by Tara­dath Singh, while Kent Sam­lal and Varun De­bideen rep­re­sent­ed the oth­er busi­ness­man and busi­ness­woman.