High court Judge Bernie Stephenson has entered judgment in favour of former Postmaster General (PMG) Clare Wallace who challenged the decision of the Public Service Commission (PSC) to transfer her to the office of Deputy Director of Audit and further to the post of Trade Officer 1.
Through her lawyer Kondwani Williams, she said that the PSC was not competent and had no power to appoint any person to hold or to act in any office o transfer or remove any person to which section 86 of the Dominica Constitution applies.
Her lawyer argued that her transfer to the post of Trade Officer 1 was in effect an “unlawful reduction in rank and or demotion which is unconstitutional null and void and of no effect in law because this post is not a post which is equivalent in grade or status to the post of Postmaster General.”
He stated that she is and remains in her substantive post of Postmaster General to which she was last substantively appointed by an instrument of His Excellency the President in pursuance of Section 86(2) of the Constitution and in so doing he acted in accordance with the advice of the PSC dated October 20, 2011.
Williams urged the court to restore her back to her substantive post with “all due and speedy dispatch.”
But the attorney general’s office argued that there was undue delay in bringing the application before the court which amounts to an abuse of the process. The matter was brought to court one year and six months after the transfer.
But in her judgment, Justice Stephenson ruled that “the decision of the PSC to remove and purportedly transfer the claimant from the post of PMG was contrary to sections 85 (3)(a) and 86 (2) of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Dominica and is therefore unconstitutional null and void and of no effect in law.”
See judgment attached
https://natureisle.news/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Judgment-DOMHCV2018-0077.pdf
Good decision i’m happy for Mrs Wallace