Fired Gaths Mine worker wins case

trying to take away fabricated items from the premises without authority.
Personal Mlilo had worked for the mine for 13 years and allegedly received certain fabricated items from a pensioner, Mr Shoko.
He intended to seek authority to remove the items from work premises and looked for the manager Mr Phiri in order to ask for the authority.
Mlilo approached the security checkpoint to inquire if Mr Phiri had gone out.
This was before his time to leave and the security guards apprehended him for taking the fabricated items without authority.
The matter was taken before a hearing authority that accepted that there was confusion at the gate and the security guards had acted prematurely.
The second witness was viewed with suspicion by the committee, which (without any evidence to that effect) suspected that one of the guards must have connived with Mlilo, but the deal went sour.
There was further speculation that these deals had been going on undetected and the hearing committee treated these speculations as proven facts, concluding there had to be a deterrent penalty.
Labour Court president Ms Lilian Hove, said a perusal of the record does not have any shred of evidence that Mlilo and the guard wanted to engage in any shoddy deal, or that the two were in the habit of conniving to steal company property.
Ms Hove said: “The chairman clearly misdirected himself by determining the appellant’s guilty on the basis of an imagined deal.
“He further misdirected himself by finding that there was overwhelming evidence that appellant wanted to steal. There was no such overwhelming evidence.”
She was of the view that the chairman of the hearing failed to properly consider the facts before him, while the employer did not manage to disprove appellant’s submission that when he approached the gate, he intended to make an inquiry.
Ms Hove pointed out that the hearing committee accepted this when they concluded there had been confusion at the checkpoint and that the guards may have acted prematurely.
“Having come to this conclusion, the hearing committee ought to have found that the appellant’s explanation was probably true and made a finding in his favour. The facts don’t disclose that the appellant wanted to steal and a weighing of the balance of probabilities, in my opinion, favours the appellant,” said Ms Hove.