By William Madouk
Marko Reech, the plaintiff lawyer has challenged UAP defense claim that terminated staff had unpaid loans.
In a statement to the media following the adjournment of a case hearing, Advocate Reech revealed that they had submitted their response to the presiding judge, and the court has postponed the hearing until January 2025.
“Today’s session was set really for the reply from both sides, the reply from the dependent side or the UAP and our reply to the counterclaim – we have successfully submitted and exchanged those documents with the other party,” said Reech.
“The [next] session is fixed on 16 January 2025 for the hearing. Lastly, we are going to hear our case,” he added.
Mr. Reech revealed that the upcoming session is going to be framing of issues and hearing of complainant’s account.
“We are going to frame the issues and we are going to hear the case on the same day. The issues are going to be framed by the court and we are going to hear the plaintiff’s case on that day,” he claimed.
Four days ago, defense advocate for UAP Insurance Company decided to continue the court hearing in the high court and presented fresh evidence, claiming that the firm’s plaintiff owed the company some cash.
However, the plaintiff’s lawyer trashed the cash claims, asserting that no evidence to justify the claim.
“But actually, in our view and in our evidence that we have, that money is not even existing,” he noted.
In October last year, UAP Insurance firm dismissed at least ten national staff for calling for improved payment.
But the UAP administration’s verdict goes contrary to the Ministry of Labor’s order calling for the reinstatement of 10 fired staff over a tiff.
UAP and its national employees have been at loggerheads over unfair treatment and the same job with different wages for nationals compared to their foreign expatriate colleagues.
That forced about 70 national staff to stage a sit-in strike, bringing the UAP business to a standstill.
Luka Nyarsuk Nason, Chairman of the Labor Advisory Council, in a letter dated September 29, 2023, asked the UAP management to also put on hold all administrative measures taken against staff.
In October, the Ministry of Labor delivered a long-awaited verdict against the pitting brawl between the UAP insurance management and national staff over unfair treatment and salary structure.
Mary Hillary Wani, the undersecretary in the Ministry of labor on the resolution of the dispute over UAP national staff grievances, directed the UAP firm to instantly reinstate 10 national employees who were axed.
“The terminated members of the staff association, both executive and members, are to be reinstated without fail (section 73, sub (2) (a),” she noted.
The Labor Ministry instructed UAP management to review the salary structure and to give the human resources office to a South Sudanese national.
“The national human resource official is to be trained and given full responsibility for human resource work,” Ms. Wani noted.
According to the labor docket, positions for UAP staff who are physically working in Kenya will be advertised and nationalized.
However, this outlet establishes that none of the Ministry of Labor’s verdicts had been implemented by the UAP Company by the press time.