The Industrial Relations Court (IRC) in Blantyre on Tuesday ordered Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) to pay more than K500 million of taxpayers money as compensation to its former employees who were fired in 2010.
IRC deputy chairperson Jack N’riva ordered the revenue body to compensate the ex-employees basing on his supplementary judgement of the matter on May 15 2014 in which he ruled that the people were unfairly dismissed.
According to the judgement, basing on the mitigation factors, the former employees will get compensation of 30 months’ salary as well as leave pay while one person will be paid for 42 months.
More than 170 people will benefit from the compensation, which will see the lowest paid getting about K750 000 while the highest will cart home about K10 530 000.00
MRA has further been ordered to make the payments within 18 days from the day of the judgement which is October 21 2014.
MRA dismissed 215 employees on July 28 2010, but re-engaged a few of them while others died while waiting for judgement. The court has ordered the revenue body to pay the deceased in a similar manner through their representatives.
The court also directed MRA to make provision for repatriation of all former employees once they indicate their readiness, within 30 days, to places of their choice within Malawi.
However, representative of the aggrieved former workers, Frank Ngagwe, said in an interview after the assessment that much as they were happy that justice has prevailed, the ruling was not satisfactory.
“We are happy that after a long battle, we will finally get our compensation. However, we are not satisfied with the judgement because a number of issues have not been considered,” said Ngagwe.
He said, among other issues, since they were unfairly dismissed, they wanted to be compensated up to their respective retirement age.
“We also wanted payment for redundancy benefits and notice pay in line with our conditions of service and aggravated payment and exemplary damages. We will be meeting our counsel on the way forward on appealing to the High Court against the determination,” said Ngagwe.
