Ms. Noor Aishah Binti KM Abu Bakar from our Industrial Relations Department successfully defended our member company, Aegis BPO Malaysia Sdn Bhd in an Unfair Dismissal claim brought by a former employee of the Company pursuant to Section 20 of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 (“IRA”) at the Industrial Court of Johor Bahru.
Brief facts:
The Claimant was employed as a Team Leader – Operation effective on 15 May 2017 vide letter dated 25 April 2017. The Claimant was subject on probation for a period of three (3) months. Prior to the abandonment of employment, the Claimant held the same position with the last drawn basic salary of RM 3500.00.
The Claimant was absent from 30 December 2020 without any reasonable reason and without even informing or attempting to inform his superior and/or without approval from the Company. The Company had attempted to contact him on 3 January 2021 but there was no response from him.
The Company had issued a show cause letter dated 6 January 2021 to the Claimant due to his absenteeism without authorisation, approval and without informing the Company till the date of the show cause letter. Nevertheless, the Claimant failed to contact the company and failed to get any approval and remained absent.
The Claimant had in fact breached his contract of employment with the Company due to his absenteeism which had caused serious disruption at work especially at the operations of Call Centre. The Company had tried to contact the Claimant but to no avail and the Company was of the view that the Claimant was not interested to work with the Company anymore, evident by the Claimant’s continuous unauthorised absence and abandonment of his job and duty on his own free will.
The Company decided to issue a letter of abandonment of duty dated 12 January 2021 since the Claimant was absent from duty from January 2021 without any prior authorisation. Furthermore, the Claimant had not attempted to inform the Company of his absence nor replied to the show cause issued to him vide letter dated 6 January 2021. Based on the attendance record, the Claimant was in fact absent from 30 December 2020.