A judge has endorsed a decision by fruit processing firm Del Monte Kenya Ltd to fire an accountant for unauthorised access to staff payroll and raising her salary and benefits while on sick leave.
The accountant, Catherine Ochako, was dismissed in December 2020 after her boss discovered an illegal change to her basic salary from Sh91,105 to Sh250,000.
She accessed the system and amended the salary on her payslip by providing herself benefits which were a preserve of the management.
She also changed her housing allowance from Sh19,000 to Sh35,000 and converted her transport allowance of Sh7,500 to a vehicle allowance of Sh28,000.
In the suit filed at the Employment and Labour Relations Court in Nairobi by Ms Ochako seeking damages for unlawful termination, the company's lawyers told Justice Byram Ongaya that she made the salary adjustments twice on November 11 and 12, 2020 by accessing a payroll category not assigned to her.
The court heard that the accountant made the first adjustment on November 11--the same day she had been granted sick leave and was recorded as not present in office, by increasing her salary on the payslip from Sh91,000 to Sh250,000 and later to Sh170,000.
The second adjustment was made the following day when she changed her basic salary from Sh170,000 to Sh200,000. Ms Ochako explained that the changes occurred when she was checking whether the payroll system was properly working as it always had system errors that needed to be constantly checked.
She said the alleged alterations were not meant to defraud the company as it did not make any actual monetary loss since she was not paid the higher salary.
Discovery of the alterations was made during a routine monthly payroll review by her supervisor.
Upon dismissal, Ms Ochako sued seeking general damages and full benefits amounting to Sh2 million. She had worked at the firm for four years.
Explaining that the alleged alterations were not meant to defraud the company, Ms Ochako said it was an exercise she undertook each month to check whether tax was correctly deducted before releasing pay.
But Justice Ongaya ruled that termination was fair and valid since the alleged misconduct was established and was not in doubt.
"The court upholds the company's case that the dismissal was fair in procedure and substance. The reason for termination is shown to have been valid and existing as at dismissal per section 43 of the Employment Act, 2007 and the reason was fair as relating to the claimant’s misconduct per section 45 of the Act. Section 41 of the Act on notice and hearing the claimant was complied with," said the judge.
The judge noted that Ms Ochako testified confirming that she was doing a test run of the system and it was done on a live environment instead of a test environment as was expected.
In a contradictory testimony, she stated that she had tested on both live and test environments.
