SPECIAL REPORT : Frustrated, jobless, expatriate wins Sh1.7bn after eight years

Dr Hector Sequeira gestures during an interview with The Citizen in Dar es Salaam last week. He is awaiting the execution of the High Court ruling over his unlawful dismissal from the Serengeti Breweries Limited.

PHOTO| SALHIM SHAO

What you need to know:

  • But little did he know that he would soon spend the next seven years jobless and fighting for his labour rights in court after a shocking and unlawful dismissal by his employer.

Dar es Salaam. When Dr Hector Sequeira left India in August 2008 to take up a job offer in Tanzania, he was reasonably excited. The job would add to his vast international experience and give him an opportunity to further apply his expertise.

But little did he know that he would soon spend the next seven years jobless and fighting for his labour rights in court after a shocking and unlawful dismissal by his employer.

It is a life story only too ideal for a Bollywood script. He had worked for the South African telecom giant, MTN, based in Afghanistan as Vice President for Organizational Development for two years when he got an opportunity to come to Tanzania to work as the Human Resources General Manager with Serengeti Breweries Limited (SBL).

But in an unexpected turn of events, his two-year contract was terminated only six months into the job on grounds that the job was to be localized. He was further told that the Immigration Department had refused to provide a work permit for the remaining 18 months. He was told that he was supposed to immediately pack his belongings and return to India.

It was a day Dr Sequeira says he would not easily forget in his lifetime.

“When the six month work permit that I had been given at the beginning of my tenure expired on February 10, 2009, I was summoned by top SBL management only to be told that my employment had been terminated. I was told the Immigration Department had declined to extend the permit, arguing that the position should be localized,” Dr Sequeira, who holds a Doctorate Degree in Organizational Psychology from the National Institute of Management in Mumbai, India, told The Citizen in an interview.

The then SBL managing director, Mr Ajay Mehta, told him that he had to go back to India. To Dr Sequeira, this was a serious breach of the contract he had signed with SBL after a successful job interview in February 2008.

Worse still, the SBL management failed to substantiate their claim that he was being fired simply because the job had to be localized and that the company could not secure an extension of the work permit.

When he had reported for work on August 29, 2008, he had been handed a six month work permit secured by SBL from the Immigration Department. He was told efforts were being made to extend the permit. Before the expiry of the work permit, he had asked his immediate boss about the progress of the extension of the permit and he was assured that his work permit was being processed alongside two other newly recruited colleagues.

“The first time I went to my immediate boss was on December 21 2008, and the second time was January 7, 2009,” he says.

After his dismissal, Dr Sequeira asked to be shown the evidence that the Immigration Department had declined to extend his permit. He also requested for the department’s letter that said that the position should be localized. They couldn’t produce the documents. In 2011, about three years after his dismissal SBL produced, as evidence in court, a letter from the Tanzania Investment Centre advising the company to localise the position. This letter had not been shown to Dr Sequeira before. “Instead, I was shown government receipts issued on November 2, 2008 for the company’s payments of $2,112 to the Immigration Department being fees for the work permit applications for the three of us,” he narrates.

He was then ordered to urgently vacate the company’s Upanga residence and to hand over the company car that he had been using.

The decision to challenge the dismissal

He moved to a cheaper apartment and soon left for Nairobi, Kenya, where he spent several days contemplating the next move. He decided to return to Tanzania, having made his mind to fight for justice to the end.

He convinced himself that the struggle for his labour rights would set the record straight on what transpired. That an expatriate with such qualifications and work experience as his can be recruited from thousands of kilometres away only to be rendered jobless after six months of service on the pretext that the job should to be localized was astonishing,” Dr Sequeira says, adding that it was similarly astonoshing that a firm like SBL which generates billions of shillings in annual profit and that has recruited over 45 expatriates had failed to extend a work permit for one of its senior officers, six months after employment.

Dr Sequeira goes to court

Dr Sequeira then filed a case at the High Court praying for the order of reinstatement without loss of remuneration or alternatively that he be paid salaries equal to 18 months of the remaining period of the contract. Also, he demanded that SBL effect payments of 48 months of salaries for unlawful termination, harassment and disturbance.

“I filed an employment dispute at the High Court of Tanzania Labour Division in Dar es Salaam in April 2009, two months after termination. Labour laws by that time demanded that employment disputes amounting to over Sh100 million be lodged at the High Court,” he says.

But the plea he filed at the High Court was thrown out after two years in 2011, on technicalities. He was told to take the case for mediation first at the Commission for Mediation and Arbitration (CMA). He was advised to file a case at the CMA in Temeke. But despite the setback, he would be thankful that the High Court helped him at that time with a letter to the Immigration Department that secured him a residence permit to continue his search for justice. Dr Sequeira says one of the challenges he faced at the CMA were unexplained delays and postponements of his case by the two arbitrators on frivolous reasons.

“I had to submit my complaints to the CMA chief executive officer, Mr Cosmas Msigwa. What happened after that is that the two arbitrators who were handling my case resigned one after another,” he says.

He said the case was then shifted to Ilala CMA. Here, Dr Sequeira showed that SBL’s claims that the company had terminated his employment so as to localize the position were not true because since his departure, no efforts had been made to that effect. Instead, the director of Operations, the managing director and the HR manager had at different times been acting in the position.

Dr Sequeira also successfully proved at the CMA that the beverage company recruited foreigners in his position after they had fired him. In October 2010, SBL recruited a Ghanaian to hold the position. He was later replaced by a South African, something that clearly indicated that localisation claim was just a hoax, he narrated. “In every country there are localisation policies. During my interview I asked about the localisation policy in Tanzania and they assured me that there was no problem,” he says.

“At an expatriate level, one doesn’t accept recruitment without full assurance on job security. Had I been told that I was coming to Tanzania for only six months, I would rather have remained in the Middle East,” he said.

The Ilala CMA ruled in his favour on June 15, 2015 and ordered the SBL to pay him salaries of the remaining 18 months in his two years contract amounted to $130, 680 (Sh274,428,000).

SBL was also ordered to pay daily subsistence expenses from the day of termination of employment to the day he would be repatriated to the country of his recruitment, India. That put the total payable amount in compensation that SBL was supposed to pay him to $813,120 (about Sh1.7 billion at the exchange rate of Sh2, 100 per $1) excluding tax and interest.

But SBL was dissatisfied with the CMA ruling and went to the High Court to have the ruling quashed. But the Court dismissed SBL’s plea on June 2, 2016, to give the complainant a moral victory in the struggle.

He says when his case was ongoing in the High Court, he faced frequent harassments and intimidation. Citing an example, he said his place was, on March 16 this year, ransacked by Immigration officials who then arrested and detained him. His arrest and detention at that time almost cost him the case at a crucial time. He was due to present an affidavit before the High Court the following day. “The presentation of the affidavit was crucial to my winning the case. Any failure to do so would have led to my losing the case. I faced a “do or die” scenario,” he says.

While still under Immigration detention, Dr Sequeira called a friend to help him secure the affidavit from a lawyer he had assigned two days earlier. Unfortunately the lawyer said he was not able to do the job for unknown reasons.

“I’d to start all over again and gave this friend of mine all the necessary information I’d prepared for the affidavit. He had to use another lawyer to prepare the affidavit. When I was released on bail late that night, my friend told me that the affidavit was ready,” he says. “I appeared before the High Court the following day and reinforced my conviction that my troubles and sufferings were orchestrated by someone or a group of people who intentionally wanted to see me lose the case,” he adds.

Because SBL delayed to act in accordance to the High Court’s June 2, 2016 ruling Mr Sequeira filed for execution of the judgement in the same Court on June 20, 2016. The hearing for the execution was on July 4, 2016. The Court sent summons to SBL and their advocates to appear on July 27, 2016. When they did they demanded time to file affidavit and were given two weeks until August 11, 2016. The final hearing is scheduled for today, August 29, 2016.

How did he survive for eight years without a job?

Dr Sequeira unsuccessfully applied for employment in at least 300 local companies as his case was ongoing but the challenge was always that the companies were curious on how his employment with SBL ended.

With support of a friend, he then established a consultancy firm with an office in Upanga but he was forced to close it a few months later following frequent queries from authorities. With no job, he had to live on his savings from previous employment. Legal costs alone ate up Sh100 million from his savings, he said.

“Material and moral support from fellow Goans living in the country also sustained me tremendously,” Dr Sequeira, a father of three, says.

He now expects that the compensation awarded by the High Court would be promptly paid so that he can put the painful past behind him and live a normal life again.