KUALA LUMPUR (July 24): The Industrial court has ordered Maxis Broadband Sdn Bhd, a wholly-owned unit of Maxis Bhd (KL:MAXIS), to pay a former project manager specialist a sum of RM703,664 for unfair dismissal.

In his decision dated July 16, Industrial Court of Malaysia chairman Mohammad Zulbahrin Zainuddin awarded the sum to the claimant, Ng Keng Seng, after Zulbahrin found that Maxis Broadband had dismissed Ng without giving him a warning or a show cause letter as to his performance.

Zulbahrin said that this caused doubts over the actual reason for Ng’s dismissal.

He also surmised that Ng had a clean record at the company and no disciplinary actions had been taken against him by the company. The company had claimed that the Ng’s performances were unsatisfactory during his tenure at the company.

Zulbahrin found that while the company had given Ng low evaluations, they had never specified why he was given such low evaluations over his performance.

“There is nowhere stated in the evaluations, any conclusions that his performances were so weak that it deemed dismissal from the company,” Zulbahrin said.

He added that the court held that Ng was placed in a state of confusion as to his low evaluations, when in fact his evaluations did not state in depth about his wrongdoings, mistakes, and shortcomings of his role.

He said that his decision to award the sum took into consideration Section 30(5) of the Industrial Relations Act 1967, which states: “The Industrial Court is required to act in accordance with “equity, good conscience, and the substantial merits…without regard to technicalities and legal form”.

He said that the company failed to prove beyond the balance of probabilities that the Ng’s dismissal was fair and just.

According to the court judgement sighted by The Edge, in awarding the sum, Zulbahrin gave the claimant 24 months of back wages and compensation in lieu of reinstatement to the company, which amounted to RM703,644.

Ng was represented by lawyer Patrick Tan Yan Hong from Messrs Tang and Hong, while Maxis Broadband was represented by Janice Anne Leo, Adrienne Sena, and Gurjeevan Singh Sachdev from Messrs Steven Thiru & Sudhar Partnership.