Malé, Maldives — The Employment Tribunal has asked the Transparency Maldives to reinstate and compensate an employee of the organization who was forced to resign from the job under pressure.
The complaint against Transparency was presented by Ali Shareef. He was in the position of a Senior Project Coordinator of Transparency under the agreement the two parties had signed on March 26, 2017. Shareef has stated that he has worked continuously approximately for five years at the permanent job provided by Transparency Maldives.
On July 17, 2017, Shareef informed the then Executive Director of Transparency, Mariyam Shiuna and the Communication and Advocacy Manager, Aiman Rasheeda about receiving a job offer from Westminster Foundation For Democracy while he was working at Transparency, the management regarded this as a verbal resignation and sent notice of termination via email the following day.
The mail detailed the dates of his annual holiday along with the date to submit all of his works and the last day of work as well.
In addition to this, Transparency had also emailed all the employees of Transparency except Shareef informing about his departure.
Regarding this, Shareef stated that his conversation with two of the authorities about him receiving another job opportunity was in good faith and not with the intention of giving notice. Shareef noted that the notice was given against Clause 11 of the agreement that was signed between Shareef and the Transparency company.
In addition to this, Shareef stated that he believes that despite not giving a notice stating that he wants to resign, deciding dates for his annual holiday by Transparency Maldives themselves without any discussion with him along with asking Shareef to assign his work to someone else and informing the last of his work day is against the rules of the Employment Act.
Shareef has also stated that a higher authority of Transparency Maldives had spoken to a higher authority of the Westminster Foundation For Democracy in a manner that Shareef would negatively affect the job he received from that foundation.
With the pressure from Transparency Maldives, Shareef stated that he was forced to resign from his job and due to the reference that was given by Transparency Maldives, he even lost the job offer he received from Westminster Foundation For Democracy.
When Shareef presented the issue to Employment Tribunal requesting for compensation against his loss, and reinstating of his job at the Transparency Maldives as he was forced out.
Employment Tribunal investigated Shareef’s case and announced that the Shareef’s resignation from the job of Transparency Maldives is a case of constructive dismissal and that he was compelled to resign. With this, Employment Tribunal ordered Transparency Maldives to not consider Shareef as a resigned employee from the position and reinstate him to his original job position.
Along with this, the Employment Tribunal has also decided that the actions towards Shareef from Transparency was unfair and that the job opportunity that Shareef lost from ‘Westminster Foundation For Democracy’ is due to the actions of Transparency Maldives.
Due to this reason, the Employment Tribunal orders Transparency to compensate for the losses Shareef has incurred from the day of resignation til the day of verdict from the Employment Tribunal and give Shareef his deserving salary and advantages if he was still working at his job for this duration.
Tribunal concluded the matter on March 9th of this year by asking Transparency to fulfill the ordered tasks within 14 days, excluding public holidays, and to send a letter within five days since the tasks have been completed.
