Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer man­ag­er at a com­put­er re­tail­er, who was abrupt­ly dis­missed af­ter near­ly three decades with the com­pa­ny, has filed a wrong­ful dis­missal law­suit.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing Fazir Mo­hammed of Pe­nal filed the claim against The Wizz Com­put­ers Lim­it­ed and its di­rec­tor, Aza­ad Mo­hammed.

Ac­cord­ing to court fil­ings ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia, Mo­hammed be­gan work­ing with the com­pa­ny as a tech­ni­cian in 1997. He re­ceived sev­er­al pro­mo­tions over the years and was ap­point­ed Ser­vice/Op­er­a­tions Man­ag­er in 2009.

Mo­hammed stat­ed that dur­ing his 27 years of em­ploy­ment he was nev­er is­sued a warn­ing let­ter nor sus­pend­ed.

In his claim, Mo­hammed said that on May 17, 2024, while work­ing at the com­pa­ny’s Point Lisas ware­house, a sub­or­di­nate in­formed him that Aza­ad had in­struct­ed that he run elec­tri­cal wiring for dusk-to-dawn lights around the fa­cil­i­ty’s perime­ter.

Mo­hammed claimed he sent a text mes­sage to Aza­ad ex­plain­ing that the task was not part of his job de­scrip­tion and re­quest­ing that two em­ploy­ees be as­signed to car­ry out the work. He said he re­ceived no re­sponse.

He con­tin­ued per­form­ing his reg­u­lar du­ties and took mea­sure­ments of the build­ing to de­ter­mine what ma­te­ri­als would be re­quired for the wiring.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, when Aza­ad lat­er ar­rived at the fa­cil­i­ty, he in­sult­ed him and in­formed him that he was fired with im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

In the law­suit, Mo­hammed’s at­tor­neys, Yaseen Ahmed and Tara Lutch­man, ar­gued that the com­pa­ny was re­quired to pro­vide their client with rea­son­able no­tice pri­or to ter­mi­na­tion, de­spite the ab­sence of a spe­cif­ic ter­mi­na­tion clause in his con­tract.

“The claimant con­tends that the treat­ment by the de­fen­dants, and in par­tic­u­lar the al­ter­ation of his job du­ties, was cal­cu­lat­ed to and/or like­ly to se­ri­ous­ly dam­age and/or de­stroy his pro­fes­sion­al stand­ing, good rep­u­ta­tion, emo­tion­al well-be­ing, and the re­la­tion­ship of trust and con­fi­dence be­tween him­self and his em­ploy­er,” the at­tor­neys stat­ed.

They fur­ther con­tend­ed that nei­ther the com­pa­ny nor Aza­ad had valid grounds for the ter­mi­na­tion.

“The claimant al­so con­tends that the con­duct of the sec­ond de­fen­dant (Aza­ad), whether on his own be­half or as agent of the first de­fen­dant, se­vere­ly hu­mil­i­at­ed him in front of staff, in­clud­ing sub­or­di­nates, and was high-hand­ed and cal­cu­lat­ed to em­bar­rass and be­lit­tle him in the eyes of mem­bers of the pub­lic,” the fil­ings said.

The at­tor­neys said the law­suit was filed af­ter the de­fen­dants failed to re­spond to a pre-ac­tion let­ter threat­en­ing le­gal pro­ceed­ings.

Through the claim, Mo­hammed is seek­ing com­pen­sa­tion for wrong­ful dis­missal, as well as loss of earn­ings for 18 months, cal­cu­lat­ed at $324,000.

He is al­so seek­ing $121,378.59 in ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion, claim­ing that in June 2021 Aza­ad re­quest­ed that he make pay­ments to the com­pa­ny’s cred­it card ac­count, which were nev­er re­im­bursed.

The mat­ter has not yet been as­signed to a High Court judge, and the com­pa­ny has not of­fi­cial­ly re­spond­ed to the al­le­ga­tions.