The Employment and Labour Relations Court in Kenya has ruled in favour of a teacher who was fired by Riara Group of Schools for sending pornographic emails to senior members of staff on two occasions.
Apollo Amanya, who was hired on June 10, 2019, was fired on March 18, 2021, for violating the school’s e-learning policy by sharing nude photos. He filed a lawsuit against the school for unfair dismissal.
During the trial, the school informed the court that Amanya shared unsolicited pornographic materials with numerous senior members of staff between February 24 and 25, 2021.
Sharing pornographic content, according to the school, was against its e-learning principles, which Amanya was aware of.
However, Amanya admitted in court that his email had been hacked and that he had reported the incident to the police as soon as he became aware of the intrusion. He added that on February 26, 2021, another set of photos was distributed from the same email account despite resetting the password.
The teacher claimed that the offensive pictures were sent from the ICT lab via his email account. Amanya added that as he was in class, someone else must have been responsible for the sending of the pictures.
The teacher reported the hack into his account on March 19, 2021, a day after being subjected to the school’s disciplinary proceedings and dismissed.
Although the teacher was guilty of distributing offensive photos, the dismissal procedure was unfair, according to Justice Bernard Manani’s decision in the case.
Manani argued that the teacher should have been given a fair hearing before being fired by the defendant. He continued by saying that even if the school had a good cause for terminating Amanya’s employment agreement, it was unable to persuade the judge that doing so adhere to the rules of due process.
Manani compensated the teacher for his unlawful termination by granting him Ksh110,000, which was equal to his pay for two months. The compensation was given since he wasn’t given a fair trial despite what appeared to be violations on his part.