CHIKOMBA Rural District Council (RDC) is making a fresh bid after two failed attempts to approach the Supreme Court to challenge a Labour Court judgment that cleared its former employee of defrauding the local authority of US$2.
Chikomba RDC fired Lawrence Magwiroto, who was employed as a field officer, after he was found guilty of fraud during an internal hearing in 2020.
The local authority alleged that Magwiroto had over-mastered and under-mastered the cash payments they received from ratepayers, thereby defrauding the local authority of ZWL$50 equivalent to US$2,50 in 2020.
Magwiroto appealed against the dismissal to the chief executive officer Bullen Chiwara, who upheld the decision of the internal hearing committee.
Through his lawyers of Lawman Law Chambers, Magwiroto later appealed to the Exemptions Committee of the National Employment Council of Rural District Councils, which set aside the decision of the hearing committee and reinstated him to his former position as the field officer without loss of salary.
The local authority filed an appeal under case LC/H/89/21 to the Labour Court against the decision of the Exemptions Committee, arguing that the respondent, Magwiroto, was guilty of the fraud charge.
Labour Court judge Justice Lawrence Murasi dismissed the appeal with costs.
“Having regard to the pleadings filed by the appellant, it is evident that no evidence of a fraudulent misrepresentation was made,” Justice Murasi said in his judgment.
“The respondent wrote figures which were different from the amounts actually banked. However, the correct amounts were banked in the EcoCash biller code.”
The local authority attempted twice to apply for leave of appeal to the Supreme Court, but both matters were struck off the roll because the applications were defective.
But in the latest application for condonation for late filing of an application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, Chikomba RDC human resources manager Tererai Chiriga, through lawyers of Gill, Godlonton and Gerrans, said the local authority had rectified the queries raised by the Labour Court.
Among its grounds of appeal, Chikomba RDC said the Labour Court had factually misrepresented that Magwiroto was a field officer when he was a revenue clerk.
“Further, as clearly appears from Annexure C, this honourable court determined the appeal on the incorrect factual basis that the respondent was employed as a field officer yet in fact his position was that of a revenue clerk,” Chiriga said.
“Considering the great difference between these two positions, it is my firm belief that if this honourable court had determined this matter on the correct factual basis, it would have arrived at a different conclusion.
“Therefore, this honourable court misdirected itself and there is as reasonable chance that the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe will vacate the judgment in question on that basis.”
