Former employee to sue cooperative

A former employee of Pfunda Tea Farmers Cooperative (COOJP) Christine Nyiransabimana, has threatened to drag the cooperative to court over what she terms as unlawful and unfair dismissal from work.The former chief accountant who worked with the cooperative since 2002 was relieved of her duties on March 29, 2011. She accuses the cooperative of failing to compensate her after terminating her contract as required by law. “I was sacked by the president of the cooperative because I blocked all the channels he used to embezzle funds,” Nyiransabimana claimed. Nyiransabimana made further allegations that she was relieved of her duties after refusing to authorize what she termed as illegal cash transfers, withdrawals and deposit taking as the accountant. She further claimed that her professionalism was instead labelled as incompetent and forced out by Denys Uzaribara, the cooperative’s president. “While working at the Cooperative I must add that there was no clear separation of functions between different departments. Everything is all done by the president and when we tried to voice out this inconsistency, we were fired,” added Nyiransabimana. When contacted, Uzaribara acknowledged Nyiransabimana’s dismissal, insisting that it was within the law. “We sacked her legally because of incompetence on her part and we are not reversing that decision,” said Uzaribara. Asked to react to the decision by Nyiransabimana to drag the cooperative to court, the president of COOJP said they are ready for court battle since the evaluation done by Rwanda Cooperative Agency(RCA) shows she was incompetent.The president added that RCA advised COOJP to dismiss her. “We didn’t interfere with her work she was simply not competent and she will get her compensation package as required by law once the handover is done,” explained Uzaribara. Ends