EMMANUEL K. SALAMAH & 14 ORS VS GHANA REVENUE AUTHORITY

THE DECISION

After a careful consideration of the pleadings and the evidence adduced by the parties herein, it is the opinion of this court that the plaintiffs are not entitled to the reliefs they seek from the defendant and therefore their case is to be dismissed as same is without any merit whatsoever. The reasons for coming to this conclusion will soon be demonstrated in this judgment.

BACKGROUND

The plaintiffs, numbering fifteen (15) in all, are all employees of the defendant. They were engaged by the defendant and given the necessary training as recruits, after which they were given their appointment letters and posted to different stations in Ghana. They all accepted the offer of appointments given to them by the defendant. This was in the year 2015. However, the plaintiffs later claimed that the defendant had downgraded them from their senior officer’s rank to junior officers’ rank and therefore petitioned the defendant’s management about the alleged downgrading. The defendant’s management responded to the petition of the plaintiffs by insisting that it had rightly placed each plaintiff in the right rank in accordance with the policy guidelines of the Public Services Commission. The plaintiffs, obviously dissatisfied with the response of the defendant’s management to their petition, instituted the present action against the defendant with the following reliefs endorsed on their writ of summons and statement of claim:

(i) A declaration that the conduct of the defendant in downgrading the ranks of the plaintiffs from senior to junior ranks is illegal, discriminatory, and unconstitutional.

(ii) A declaration that the defendant discriminated against the plaintiffs.

(iii) An order that the defendant revert the plaintiffs back to the rank of senior officers and confer on the plaintiffs the relevant promotion the plaintiffs would have attained from the date of their employment to date.

(iv) An order that the defendant pays the plaintiffs their remuneration due as senior officers.

(v) An order that the defendant pays the difference in salary, allowances, and benefits due to the plaintiffs from the date of their employment to date.

(vi) Interest.

(vii) Costs.

The defendant denied liability for all the reliefs sought by the plaintiffs, and at the close of pleadings, the following issues, inclusive of an additional one filed by the defendant, were set down by the court for determination:

(a) Whether the effective date of employment of the plaintiff