Fired lawyer gets go-ahead to challenge gaming commission
THE Supreme Court has given attorney Charles Ganga Singh the go-ahead to challenge, in the judicial review court, the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commissions decision to fire him.
Justice Norma McIntosh, who handed down the ruling, also issued an injunction barring the statutory organisation from filling Ganga Singh’ post as legal officer until the matter had been heard by the judicial review court.
Howard Mollison, the acting chairman of the Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Commission, last month instructed Charles Ganga Singh not to return to his post.
The reasons cited by Mollison included Ganga Singh’s decision to send a copy of the legal opinion he wrote when the board fired Patrick Hall, its former chief accountant.
Hall, who had over 18 years of service with the commission, was told to go under controversial circumstances which triggered protests by his colleagues who said that he was being made a scapegoat for authorising a number of tax cuts when in fact he had been sanctioned to do so.
However, he went back to work under an injunction issued by Supreme Court judge David Pitter who said he was to continue in the post pending a resolution of the issue in the judicial review court.
Last month when the issue came up in the Supreme Court, Justice Neville Clarke threw the case out after the commission’s lawyer Dennis Morrison QC argued that Hall’s case had no place in the judicial review court as the issues involved were not of public law.