By Garmah Never Lomo, garmahlomo@gmail.co
The management of Firestone Liberia in Harbel, Margibi County has dismissed nine Information Technology (IT) staff employees for what it termed as “grave misconduct” on the part of the affected persons, revealed a letter from the Company, which is in the possession of www.newspublictrust.com.
On February 2, 2020, this media outlet first reported, quoting a credible source at the Firestone rubber plantation company, that a fraud has been unearthed in its Information Technology (IT) Department and the company’s management has taken initial action against employees allegedly involved in the scam.
Nine persons working with the company were booked recently for allegedly doing payroll deduction of one US dollar each from Firestone Liberia employees “for their own selfish gain.”
Firestone management said the dismissal of the nine IT Employees is in line with the Company’s “Decent Work Act” of 2015 Section 14.3 (a) (I), which states that an employer may immediately terminate an employee’s employment for grave misconduct, which makes it impossible to continue or to resume the necessary relationship of mutual trust and confidence between the employee and employer.
According to dismissal letter, the nine IT Employees were dismissed on January 28, 2020, pending investigation into the matter.
The letter said, on 26th of January 2020, the Company’s IT payroll department reported the nine IT employees to top management regarding their function as IT payroll data entry juniors, which led to an indefinite suspension on the 28th of January 2020.
Firestone management disclosed that the investigation, which established the fact against the affected employees, was conducted between January 29 and February 13, 2020.
The dismissal letter also revealed that the affected IT staff employees are members of the payroll team responsible for imputing and or verifying the payroll of all non-staff employees of the Company.
According to the dismissal letter, the verification system shows that IT payroll employee’s weekly payroll was rightly entered, but subsequently modified to increase the pay of some IT payroll employees.
The dismissal letter also made the following disclosures:
That the pay slips of Firestone Liberia issued on each payday to every employees states the amount paid for all day’s work including specifics for rest days, holidays and overtime; and
That they (dismissed employees) consistently signed for and received additional amount of money on their monthly salaries as per Management’s records during the months under review July to December 2019 for rest day(Sunday) holidays and overtime work that they don’t perform and failed to notify or return the said amount to the company
On the aforementioned premises, the Management of Firestone Rubber Plantation Company has therefore given the nine IT Employees fifteen day to turn over all properties of the Company.
Meanwhile, in a telephone discussion with a reporter of the News Public Trust, Mr. Jacob D. Brown, one of the dismissed employees of Firestone, said he and his affected colleagues were first accused of punching in ‘Rest Day’ (Sunday), ‘Holidays’, and ‘Overtime’ to over pay themselves. He added that each of these policies is determined by the Company’s top Management, not by approval of any member of the IT department.
Mr. Brown also explained that, during their investigation, investigators observed that it was a system error that occurred, but they (dismissed employees) were blamed on the basis of failure on reporting the matter to the top Management.
“We had told the top Management that we were unaware of the system failure,” Mr. Brown said to this Paper’s reporter during the telephone-discussion.
He said, at Firestone’s IT department, each member is assigned a particular task: one person responsible for punching, another person for verification, which is forwarded to the department’s supervisor who counter-checks the verification and sends the verified information to the Manager of the IT department for his approval in the system before payment.
Narrating further, Mr. Brown said the crime he and his colleagues were accused of is impossible at the Firestone Rubber Plantation Company based on mechanisms or processes the Company’s top Management Team had instituted against any fraud of the kind they had been accused of.
The dismissed IT employee are: Howard Yenay, Regina Tyler, Edwin Quai, Daniel Armah, Henry Flomo, Jonathan Welweaga, Humphray Koheneh,George Nyumah and Jacob D. Brown.