Justice Anthony Wabwire Musana of the Industrial Division of the High Court has declared that Stanbic Bank illegally dismissed their Arua branch manager and directed the bank to compensate him with Shs60m with 17% interest from the date that the judgement was delivered until the implementation of the payment.
In his judgement, the judge agreed with Paul Opalok that there was no fairness in his trial because he was not served with the invitation letter to appear before the bank’s disciplinary body to answer to the charges slapped on him.
“In the matter now before us, the Court did not have sight of the written invitation with the charges. The minutes show that a document was given to the Claimant, and he was given a few minutes to review it. He was then informed that he had been charged with gross negligence and dereliction of duty for authorising irregular payments between January 2005 and December 2006,” Court documents read in part.
He further explained that the claimant was asked to provide answers to the charges yet there was an element of prejudice because the minimum standards of a written notification had not been met and the infractions should have been clearly indicated.
The judge noted that the claimant was charged with gross negligence an offence which was heard but on the charge of dishonesty, for which he was eventually dismissed, it was not heard. He noted that it could be correct to find dishonesty or negligence without necessarily charging an employee with one or the other
“When a person is charged with an offence and facts are proved which reduce it to a minor cognate offence, he or she may be convicted of the minor offence although he or she was not charged with it. In the present case, the violation of the Claimant’s right to be heard was right from the beginning. There was no written notification, and the prejudice was present in our view. It could not be attributed solely to semantics,” the judge stated.
According to Court documents, the claimant was a Branch Manager who served the bank for 18 years from June 1989 until 2007 when he was fired from the job resulting into court battles where he alleged that his contract was illegally terminated.
He claims that his dismissal didn’t follow proper trial and the bank falsified disciplinary committee minutes and violated its own Disciplinary Management Policy.
In their defence, the bank denied all allegations made by the claimant insisting that all the required procedures which resulted into his dismissal were followed after establishing that he abused his office by mismanaging the generator fuel and expense accounts at the Arua Service Centre.
The bank claimed it carried out investigations and established the Claimant’s breach of duty through actions such as debiting unrelated expenses, dishonestly requisitioning excess fuel for the generator and to multiple individuals, irregularly authorising staff vehicle fuel bills, and failing to fulfil his duties, all of which violated staff rules.
They added that the claimant was summoned to a duly constituted Staff Commendation and Disciplinary Committee (SCDC), where he received a fair hearing on 28th March 2007.
The bank contended that the termination was lawful, and all due entitlements (pension, payment in lieu of notice, less deductions) had been paid into the Claimant’s bank account.
They wondered why he was asking for compensation.
