ALVA SENDERAYI, who has had a protracted 13-year labour dispute with his former employers, Kwekwe City Council, will have to wait a little longer after the municipality took the matter to the Supreme Court.
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Council through its lawyer Jethro Nyarota last month gave notice that it will challenge High Court judge Justice Loice Matanda Moyo ruling of July 30 in the Harare High Court, declaring that Senderayi was illegally dismissed from work.
Nyarota wants the matter taken to the highest court of appeal in a last ditch effort to save the local authority an arm and a leg in salaries and allowances spanning 13 years.
Senderayi was dismissed as the council’s part-time director of health services in 2001 after being accused of spending more time on his private practice than at council clinics.
The local authority advertised the post and employed another doctor, but Senderayi has been challenging his dismissal since then.
Council lawyers argued that Justice Matanda Moyo erred in her findings that Senderayi was illegally dismissed when, in fact, his employment was a legal nullity in the first place.
“Further take notice that the appellant’s grounds of appeal . . . are that the court erred in finding the respondent’s employment had been invalidly terminated and was therefore a nullity without making a declaration that he had in the first place been validly employed which declaration it could not have completely made as respondent had been hired contrary to statute,” part of the submissions read.
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Council submitted that the employment of Senderayi was not approved by the Local Government Board in line with the Ubarn Council’s Act and therefore he was never legally part of the council employment, although his employment was later regularised.
Nyarota argued that the government through the board only regularised the employment after Senderayi had been fired.
“The court erred in finding that a nullity could be regularised and that by the time it found out what could be the regularisation of the employment, relationship between Senderayi and council, the local authority had already terminated the employment and could by no lawful device be resuscitated,” wrote Nyarota.
In 2013, council discussed a possible golden handshake for Senderayi which would have seen him walk away with $30 000 in a bid to end the labour wrangle.
Councillors, however, dismissed the offer which had been tabled by town clerk Emanuel Musara.
