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Fidelis Munyoro Chief Court Reporter

Chikomba Rural District Council failed to reverse the reinstatement of an employee it fired four years ago over a financial error when the Labour Court threw out the appeal with costs.

Field officer Mr Lawrence Magwiroto was charged with fraud and after an internal hearing, he was sacked from employment.

He, however, successfully appealed to the exemptions committee of the National Employment Council for Rural District Councils, which quashed the decision of the hearing committee and reinstated him.

The local authority disagreed, having accused Mr Magwiroto of over-mastering and under-mastering amounts to the council’s account, leading to the charges of fraud.

According to the council financial records produced during the hearing, on July 7 2020, there was an ‘under-mastering’ of a total of $250. Four days later, on July 11, 2020, there was an ‘over-mastering’ of an amount of $300.

This showed that as of July 11, the records showed that Mr Magwiroto was liable to pay to council the difference between the ‘over-mastering’ and the ‘under-mastering’ of $50.

While the council sought to argue that this was how Mr Magwiroto was scheming to prejudice the local authority, the Labour Court could not see the logic of cooking the books to show more money had been received than was actually paid in.

So, in his ruling, Justice Lawrence Murasi found no merit in the appeal by the council and tossed it out.

Where a party makes bald assertions not backed by evidence and the same are denied by the party against whom they are made, such bald allegations cannot pass as having been proved on a balance of probabilities.

A party claiming a fact should present evidence of that fact which has a probative value.

In this case, Justice Murasi found that the council did not produce any scrap of evidence showing that what Mr Magwiroto had done showed that he had an intention to access the money that had been deposited in the account using the biller code.
“There was also no evidence that the respondent (Mr Magwiroto) accessed any of the amounts he had receipted,” he said.

“The inescapable conclusion is that appellant (the council) only surmised that the ‘errors’ made by the respondent could have been made with fraudulent intentions. Alas, it all ended there, being the subject of surmise and conjecture.”
It was also evident in the pleadings by the council that no evidence of a fraudulent misrepresentation was made.

While Mr Magwiroto wrote figures which were different from the amounts actually banked, correct amounts were banked in the Ecocash biller code.