Former PTSC Deputy Manager Cleared to Challenge Dismissal in Court

A former Public Transport Service Corporation official has secured court approval to sue the state entity and the Ministry of Transport over his contract termination.

Derek Achong Se-nior Re-porter A for-mer deputy gen-er-al man-ag-er of the Pub-lic Trans-port Ser-vice Cor-po-ra-tion (PTSC) has been giv-en the green light to sue his for-mer em-ploy-er and its line min-istry over a de-ci-sion to ter-mi-nate his con-tract af-ter re-duc-ing his func-tions.. Last Fri-day, High Court Judge West-min James grant-ed An-drew Nel-son leave to pur-sue a ju-di-cial re-view case over the pur-port-ed con-duct of the cor-po-ra-tion and the Min-istry of Trans-port and Civ-il Avi-a-tion.. Ac-cord-ing

to his court fil-ings, ob-tained by Guardian Me-dia, Nel-son joined the State com-pa-ny in 2024 af-ter re-tir-ing from a pri-vate com-pa-ny.. When his con-tract was about to ex-pire, it was re-newed for a fur-ther two years, end-ing in March 2027.. In Ju-ly 2025, a re-port was pub-lished by a week-ly news-pa-per al-leg-ing a tox-ic work en-vi-ron-ment at PTSC and call-ing for Nel-son’s re-moval.. Days af-ter the pub-li-ca-tion, Trans-port Min-is-ter Eli Za-k-our held a meet-ing with

PTSC of-fi-cials, in-clud-ing Nel-son and rep-re-sen-ta-tives of the Pub-lic Ser-vice As-so-ci-a-tion (PSA) and the Trans-port and In-dus-tri-al Work-ers Union (TI-WU).. Nel-son claimed that be-fore the meet-ing, Za-k-our ref-er-enced the re-port and sug-gest-ed that the al-le-ga-tions con-tained with-in were true.. Nel-son ten-dered his res-ig-na-tion but was asked to re-main in the post un-til a re-place-ment was se-lect-ed by PTSC’s then-new-ly ap-point-ed board of di-rec-tors.. In Sep-tem-ber 2025, Nel-son sus-pend-ed a labour of-fi-cer based on his al-leged

re-fusal or fail-ure to per-form his du-ties.. Two days lat-er, Nel-son was in-formed of a di-rec-tive from the min-istry re-quir-ing its ap-proval for the sus-pen-sion or ter-mi-na-tion of PTSC staff.. Al-though Nel-son was al-leged-ly not aware of the di-rec-tive when he sus-pend-ed the work-er, he was placed on ad-min-is-tra-tive leave for breach-ing it (the di-rec-tive).. Nel-son claimed that the trade unions con-tin-ued to crit-i-cise him on so-cial me-dia un-til he was ter-mi-nat-ed on Feb-ru-ary 1..

In the law-suit, Nel-son’s lawyers, Kings-ley Wales-by and Stephanie Ra-jku-mar, claimed that the min-istry did not have the ju-ris-dic-tion to is-sue the di-rec-tive un-der the leg-is-la-tion that es-tab-lished the cor-po-ra-tion.. Through the law-suit, Nel-son is seek-ing a se-ries of de-c-la-ra-tions against the min-istry and cor-po-ra-tion as well as com-pen-sa-tion for the al-leged dam-age to his pro-fes-sion-al rep-u-ta-tion.

PTSC, Andrew Nelson, judicial review, Eli Zakour, labor dispute, Trinidad, employment law