Government sues ex-staff for violating scholarship terms

Dubai: A lawyer has claimed that his client was pushed to resign after being unfairly demoted in a government department, which is suing him for violating the terms of his masters scholarship.

The government department reportedly accused its former human resources director, an Emirati, of resigning and therefore violating the terms of his scholarship to Australia and is suing him for Dh537,000 before the Dubai Civil Court.

His lawyer Mohammad Al Redha, of Al Redha and Company Advocates and Legal Consultants, countered the department's claims and explained in his defence: "My client was the department's director of human resources administration and after he obtained the masters degree in human resources administration, the department unjustly demoted him and downgraded him to a specialised employee in training and human resources development. The department violated article 101 of Dubai Government Human Resources Management Law no 26, of 2006 and demoted my client instead of promoting him& this is an arbitrary dismissal."

In its lawsuit, the department mentioned that the defendant breached the agreement (which the two parties signed in 2005) and he shouldn't have resigned from his job.

The department asked the court to order the defendant to repay the amount of the scholarship around Dh537,000 plus nine per cent legal interest.

Al Redha defended: "My client obtained the postgraduate degree and later the department demoted him and assigned someone junior to him as his director.

"This act undermined my client who attained a high educational degree and is professionally qualified. Is there humiliation more than that?

"Meanwhile, it's the department which violated the agreement and not my client. They pushed him to resign, he only left his job because he was demoted."

Al Redha further demanded that the department's lawsuit be dismissed by the Civil Court which will issue its verdict later this month.