Meteorology services to pay employees
Mpho Mokwape | Monday October 25, 2021 06:00
The department agreed through a consent order to pay the employees for all hours in excess of 176 in a five-day week after failing to pay overtime allowance for the employees who were shift workers.
According to the order issued recently by Justice Reuben Lekgowe of the Gaborone High Court, Meteorological Services had to agree that the employees were entitled to an overtime payment for all hours in terms of Regulation 12 of Public Service Regulations.
“It is declared that the applicants should be paid their overtime in excess of 176 in five-day week or 22-day month. It is ordered that the department should treat a day that follows the rest day as a paid public holiday if it falls on a rest day in terms of Employment Act. Consequently, the department is ordered to afford the applicants this right,” reads the order.
The facts of the case are that all 75 legally represented by attorney Uyapo Ndadi are employed as shift workers by the Department of Meteorological Services, a department which falls under the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources, Conservation and Tourism.
Despite being assigned to various stations across Botswana, and having been employed by the said Ministry at different times, all 75 of the applicants raised similar complaints to the Director of Public Service Management (DPSM). The complaints were in relation to the abrupt discontinuation of their overtime pay from the year 2018 and the treatment of public holidays falling on rest days as normal days and/or unpaid holidays.
According to their court documents, notwithstanding raising such complaints, the DPSM still failed to address them and continued to implement the aforesaid decisions at their detriment.
“As a result, we had no choice but to launch the present application proceedings seeking the following declaratory orders that we are entitled to choose between overtime pay or time off in lieu thereof; that the DPSM, and ultimately the department, violated the provisions of the Employment Act by not treating public holidays falling on rest days as normal days or unpaid public holidays,” reads the court papers.
Further, the employees sought relief in the form of granting of their application with costs. The employees also in their papers argued that the respondent blatantly violated Section 99(2) of the Employment Act by explaining that where a public holiday falls on the employees’ rest day, the respondent did not treat the following day as a rest day, but rather as a normal working day or an unpaid public holiday.
“With regard to that, the respondent offered no more than a bare denial of such violation without explanation or elaboration, and in addition to that, the respondent provided no substantiation thereto,” said the employees.
The employees submitted that the bare denial carried no weight at all and should not defeat their right to secure relief in relation to this issue raised.
“While it may well be, once a genuine dispute of fact has been shown to exist, that a respondent should not be compelled to set out his full evidence in his replying affidavits, a bare denial of applicant’s material averments cannot be regarded as sufficient to defeat applicant’s right to secure relief by motion proceedings in appropriate cases.”
In conclusion, the employees submitted that the respondent has violated Section 99(2) of the Employment Act, thereby denying them the enjoyment of this benefit without justifiable cause.