Retailer demands N$300 000 from axed manager Paulo

SHOPRITE is engaged in a legal battle with a former employee whom the Labour Commissioner’s Office has ordered must be reinstated.
The company is approaching the High Court to nullify the order that they must reinstate former regional manager Faustino Moises Paulo.

They allegedly also ordered Paulo to pay a sum of N$300 000 as a form of security before reinstating him.Paulo moved to Namibia in 2006 and was in charge of 16 of Shoprite’s 47 stores.Soon another manager resigned and he was charge of all 47 stores.In documents he submitted to the Labour Court Paulo claimed that he faced ‘verbal abuse and insults’ from one of his superiors and it prompted him to write a grievances letter to the top management in April last year.The letter allegedly resulted in him being suspended and disciplinary procedures initiated against him.He was charged with refusal to perform a legal and reasonable assigned task; insolence and insubordination.He told the Labour Court that the company had denied him legal representation by stating that they did not permit such for either the employee or Shoprite.Paulo claimed he was given short notice for the disciplinary hearing.More charges were read out to him at the hearing and the end result was his dismissal.He instructed Employment Solutions Consultants to take the matter to the Office of the Labour Commissioner who, after hearing his case in December last year, instructed Shoprite to reinstate him and to compensate him for unfair dismissal with a backdated pay of N$140 185.56 on or before January 22 2010.He was to report for duty at 08h00 on December 28 2009.However, he says when he reported for duty the company served him with a notice that the company was in the process of approaching the Labour Court to nullify the decision by the Office of the Labour Commissioner.He claims that the company’s lawyers also said he must pay a ‘N$300 000 security payment’, if he wants the company not to approach the Labour Court. The amount would cover the company’s legal costs, the lawyers claimed.The company’s local branches referred all inquiries to a certain Johan Van Zyl based in South Africa.Speaking from Cape Town, an employee of Shoprite Checkers’ communications department, who declined to give her name, said that the company could not comment on the matter at this stage.