NPA workers in Yei state in court over “unfair” termination

February 29, 2016 (YEI) – At least 12 employees working for the Norwegian People’s Aid’s (NPA) vocational training centre in South Sudan’s Yei River state have petitioned court after they were “unlawfully” terminated from their services last year.

The former workers, in a joint petition, want court to legally resolve the matter.

Deneya David, one of the complainants, said their termination was nonprocedural.

“When we tried to ask why we could not get a proper answer. We submitted our complaint to the labour office and today [Monday], we have presented our case to court and it’s already filed,” he told journalists.

Hearing of the court petition, Deneya disclosed, would be done on 10 March, 2016.

“This termination of the contract has affected our lives our f families, it has caused a lot of problems, physiological torture and trauma to us. We are not able to pay our children to school including feeding. Besides, they are not ready to give us our benefits and I don’t know why. Under normal circumstance if you need to terminate somebody’s contract which most of us know, but none of the procedures were followed”, he stressed.

NPA’s country director Per Helge Persen, however, said the terminated employees lacked qualification and the organisation was ready for court.

“We need to improve the quality of the centre, by improving the quality, increase the number of the teachers, students; we need different kind of tutors who are qualified. The tutors terminated last year lacked required qualifications”, explained Persen.

The assistant commissioner for labour and public service in Yei River County, Paul Ohisa described the termination of the employees as unethical and that those terminated be paid or re-instated back to work.

The Labour Act stipulates that anyone wrongly terminated must be paid an equivalent to a six month salary or be re-instated back to normal service.

(ST)