Noted Litigations

End of Service Benefits - Qatar Labour Laws

In a landmark judgement, the Appeals Court of Qatar has ordered a Doha-based trading and contracting company to pay QR54,009 as end of service benefits and QR2,350 as notice pay to one of its former employees.

Parambath Majeed had challenged the decision of his employers not to pay him gratuity and notice pay while terminating his service without assigning any specific reasons. After Majeed had worked for the company for 22 years, from April 1979 to May 28, 2001, the company informed him that his service has been terminated. Though clause 5 of the contract between Majeed and his employer mentioned service benefits as per Qatar labour laws, Majeed was not paid any gratuity. His plea for end-of-service benefits was turned down by the Labour Department and the civil court as "he was an expatriate employee working for a national firm and his contract did not specifically mention payment of gratuity". Majeed, speaking from his home town in Kannoor, Kerala, told Gulf Times yesterday that as per the legal advice of Advocate Sajitha Nizar, he filed a case at the Qatar Civil Court claiming QR2,350 as notice pay, QR53,735 as gratuity and QR500,000 as compensation for termination from service without any reasons at an unsuitable time. The company later deported him. more>>

Death Sentence cut to life

In a landmark judgment, Qatar’s Supreme Court yesterday reduced the death sentence handed down to three Asian nationals, including two Indian taxi drivers, to life sentence in the sensational “unidentified” housemaid murder case.

The proceedings of the case had started with the arrest of the trio in December 2003. The maid’s body was found in October that year at the Wakrah beach. While two of the three accused, Indians Sreedharan Manikantan and Mahadevan Unnikrishnan have been awarded a life sentence, Nepalese national Chandrasekhar Yadav has been given a 15-year sentence. He now has to serve the remaining part of eight years, according to inquiries made at the Nepalese embassy in Doha . All the convicts have been in jail for the last seven years.

The three Asians were picked up by the police for their alleged involvement in the murder of an unidentified Indonesian woman in October 2003, with whom they reportedly had contacts. Speaking to Gulf Times, the spokesperson for the law firm Abdulla Essa al-Ansari & Partners and Indian legal activist Nizar Kochery termed the case as an “extraordinary” one, having gone to the Supreme Court three times. more>>

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