Removing sanitiser in a panic costs job
A SECURITY man who removed 10 bottles of sanitiser from a workplace without authorisation due to “an all consuming fear” for his health in the early days of COVID-19 has lost his unfair dismissal action.
On May 15 last year, Bidvest Noonan Services Group Limited dismissed Israr Ahmed for gross misconduct over the removal of the bottles of sanitiser from a client’s site.
At the Workplace Relations Commission ( WRC), Mr Ahmed argued that what he did in removing the bottles of sanitiser in March 2020 was “a crime of passion”.
Mr Ahmed argued that he removed the bottles because he needed the hand sanitiser for his family and friends where he shared a home in
Dublin 12.
On behalf of Mr Ahmed,
SIPTU submitted that what Mr
Ahmed did was “totally out of character and was based on an all- consuming fear, not just for his health and safety, but for his life and the economic wellbeing of his family in
Pakistan”.
SIPTU argued that during the early stages of the pandemic,
Government guidelines focused on hand cleanliness and the use of hand sanitiser was impossible to secure.
Return
Each month Mr
Ahmed was sending a minimum of €800 home to provide for his large family in Pakistan.
SIPTU further argued
Mr Ahmed’s dismissal was disproportionate and harsh to the alleged offence.
The union stated that Mr Ahmed returned seven of the 10 bottles on the day and was in effect dismissed in respect of three bottles of hand sanitiser.
SIPTU argued that Mr Ahmed provided 11 years sterling service, with no previous disciplinary issues.
However, WRC Adjudicator Eugene Hanly found that the decision to dismiss Mr Ahmed was substantially and procedurally fair.
Mr Hanly found that Mr Ahmed did not own up to the removal of the 10 bottles until he was confronted by management.
He also found that Mr Ahmed was employed in a position of trust “and he has breached that trust”.
CRUEL scammers stole €16million last year with some preying on vulnerable people’s loneliness during the pandemic by posing as romantic love interests.
The shocking figure for 2020 is twice the amount that the cheats swindled from the cheated Irish public in 2019.
Impersonation sc ams and romantic rip-offs are amongst the wide range of t ricks by heartless fraudsters, a Banking & Payments Federation Ireland
(BPFI) report says.
The research shows that scams jumped almost 80 per cent last year – meaning victims were tricked out of €16m in 2020.
This amounts to each victim being conned out of an average of €5,300.
Despite increased awareness over frauds, scammers doubled their unlawful gains from 2019 when they stole €8m in Ireland.
That is according to the BPFI’s new FraudSMART report which shows that the amount of money lost in scams jumped by 52 per cent over 2019-2020 and that the number of scams soared by 80 per cent in that period.
However, consumers are becoming more alert to potential cons with reports of scams rising by 68 per cent in the last year.
The report states: “Fraudsters continuously update and adapt their tactics and tools.
“They have sought to exploit the fallout from the pandemic, preying on worry and fears about the virus.
“They have targeted people who have lost jobs or income and taken advantage of the increase in remote working and online shopping.”
It added: “Victims of romance fraud were conned out of an average sum of €18,000 by fraudsters in 2020, the shock figures show.
“With an increase in online dating due to Covid-19 restrictions, fraudsters preyed on people’s loneliness, isolation and vulnerability, [ and] increasingly use[d] online datingsitesorappstogainthevictim’s trust and build up a relationship and emotional connection with their victim. “Fraudsters will often devote months to this process, after which time they will create a sense of urgency in order to ask their victim for money or indeed in many cases have the victim offer them money.”
Dating
A key concern in 2021 is the growth of impersonation scams, where the fraudster pretends to be from a legitimate organisation or business. Inthe12monthstoJuly 2021, 83 per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds reported being targeted by the scams from fake revenue officials, gardai, banks, and delivery companies.
Some 72 per cent of respondents targeted by fraudsters reported that they were contacted by phone, almost twice as many as those being contacted by email (37 per cent) and text (32 per cent).