After Pakistan Today published a story on June 17 about 300 employees of M/S People (Professional Employers Private Limited) who were not paid their dues after resigning from the company, People’s management contacted Pakistan Today to offer an explanation on the matter.
The Company Secretary at People and CFO Waqas Saleem said that DHL Global Forwarding Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd is going through an internal upheaval because of management issues which has led to frequent management changes. A newly-appointed manager cancelled the eight-year old contract of People because of mala fide intentions violating the legal contractual obligations – entirely for personal gains. He awarded the contract to a personal favourite without following ethical and professional best practice.
“DHL has not paid salary invoices to People for approximately Rs 1 million. DHL has not deposited the tax deducted on the invoices of People to the tax authorities for approximately Rs 2.6 million,” said Saleem.
He claimed that DHL has not paid notice period payments (related to employees) to the tune of Rs 4.8 million to People. DHL has not paid payment of approximately Rs 1.5 million for not serving the three month obligatory notice period as per the contract between People & DHL.
People has sent invoices to DHL for the above amounts as well as reminders with no response from DHL. Therefore, People has approached the regional and global head office of DHL for intervention so that People’s staff who have been relieved of their jobs can be paid their terminal benefits, he added.
“People has also approached the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to ask DHL to fulfill their contractual obligation so that the outgoing staff can be paid. DHL is trying to avoid giving permanent employment to these employees to save money and depriving these people of benefits that are given to their regular staff,” Saleem said.
He was of the view that because DHL is guilty of non-payment of salaries and failure to deposit tax deducted at source and not having fulfilled their contractual obligations – they have hired an outside agency to do the “dirty work” of covering their mistakes and hence having resorted to extrajudicial and illegal coercion.
People has already issued payments to its resigned staff which will be disbursed over the next few days, while People is still pursuing payment from DHL, the CFO claimed.
However, Pakistan Today received a copy of acceptance’s notice of resignation and payment of terminal benefits which was issued on June 17 2016, after the report was published in the newspaper.
He said that People has also written to the tax authorities to send a show cause notice to DHL to explain why they are holding on to payments deducted from People invoices and not depositing it to the national exchequer. Lastly, People has also lodged an application for registration of an FIR against COO and Business Controller of DHL and a defamation case against their lawyer.
When contacted, a DHL official told Pakistan Today that they are taking approval from upper management for the official version. However, sources at DHL said that the company did not want to comment on the matter which is with legal counsel and also under investigation by the FIA.