A trade union­ist has been giv­en the green light to sue the Min­istry of Fi­nance over its re­fusal to dis­close an au­dit re­port in­to a med­ical in­sur­ance plan for teach­ers. 

Ear­li­er this week, High Court Judge Joan Charles grant­ed Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) branch sec­re­tary An­tho­ny Dop­son leave to pur­sue his ju­di­cial re­view case over the is­sue. 

In his court fil­ings ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Dop­son’s lawyers, led by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan of Free­dom Law Cham­bers, claimed that he made the dis­clo­sure re­quest un­der the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act (FOIA) af­ter he no­ticed me­dia re­ports of mem­bers of the plan com­plain­ing of pro­tract­ed de­lays in be­ing re­im­bursed for their claims. 

Dop­son’s lawyers re­ferred to the re­ports, in­clud­ing one which claimed that some mem­bers were wait­ing in ex­cess of two years for re­im­burse­ment af­ter their pre­vi­ous claims were processed in six weeks. 

They al­so claimed that he re­ceived per­son­al com­plaints from sev­er­al teach­ers af­fect­ed by the op­er­a­tions of the Unimed Group Health Plan, which was es­tab­lished by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) and the min­istry. 

Dop­son made the FOIA re­quest in Sep­tem­ber last year and sought the copy of the au­dit re­port done in 2023, as well as the terms and con­di­tions agreed up­on be­tween the CPO and the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA).

Re­spond­ing to the re­quest sev­er­al months lat­er, the min­istry claimed that the re­port could not be dis­closed.

It claimed that it (the re­port) con­tained ad­verse find­ings against in­di­vid­u­als, who were not giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond. It sug­gest­ed that dis­clo­sure would breach those in­di­vid­u­als’ rights to pro­tec­tion of the law and nat­ur­al jus­tice.

The min­istry al­so al­leged that the re­port would dis­close the opin­ions of gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and claimed that it would be con­trary to pub­lic in­ter­est to dis­close it. 

“The ben­e­fits to be de­rived from dis­clo­sure, such as trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, do not jus­ti­fy dis­clo­sure in cir­cum­stances where not on­ly there would be frus­tra­tion to the mak­ing of prop­er use of the re­port, but the fun­da­men­tal rights of per­sons will be in­fringed,” the min­istry said. 

In the law­suit, Dop­son’s lawyers are con­tend­ing that the min­istry pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence that dis­clo­sure would be con­trary to the pub­lic in­ter­est.

“This is an im­por­tant in­gre­di­ent with­out which the ex­emp­tion is not sim­ply made out,” they said.

They al­so de­nied that third-par­ty rights would be af­fect­ed as claimed.

“The claim that dis­clo­sure would breach third par­ties’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to pro­tec­tion of the law is a red her­ring and ar­ti­fi­cial con­cern that is not es­tab­lished on the facts of the case,” they said, ar­gu­ing dis­clo­sure would help to al­lay con­cerns that the Gov­ern­ment was com­plic­it in the is­sues with the plan.

Through the law­suit, Dop­son is seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions over the de­ci­sion and an or­der ei­ther com­pelling dis­clo­sure or di­rect­ing that the min­istry re­con­sid­er the re­quest. 

Dop­son is al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Kent Sam­lal, Aasha Ram­lal, and Natasha Bis­ram. The min­istry was rep­re­sent­ed by Rus­sell Mar­tineau, Na­toya Moore, and Ce­line Moo­sai.