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By ManOfTheHour · Posted
Thats not hers….. you nv see ex gf pad before? -
M’sian Girl Learns Hawker Secretly Paid For Her Meals For 2 Years After Hearing Of Her Mum’s PassingThis one could be adapted into a "based on a true story" movie. One day after school, the girl wandered around a nearby food court hoping to buy snacks. The smell of food eventually led her to a mixed rice stall, but after checking her pocket, she realised she only had RM2. Disappointed, she quietly walked away before the stall owner suddenly called out to her. According to the woman, the hawker told her: Hungry and confused, she eventually accepted the offer and ate at the stall. After finishing her meal, she tried asking how much she owed, but the owner refused to take any money from her. She even packed food home for her grandmother, which the owner also allowed. From that day onward, the mixed rice stall became part of her daily routine. Whenever she worried about whether the “money” would run out, the owner would reassure her by saying there was still plenty left. Learnt the heartbreaking truth years later At 18 years old, the woman returned to the neighbourhood and visited the stall again. However, instead of seeing the owner, she was greeted by his wife, who informed her that he had passed away a year after she moved away. During their conversation, the stall owner’s wife revealed something that left her stunned: there was never any money left behind by her mother. Instead, the hawker had heard from customers about her family situation and felt sorry after seeing her staring longingly at the food that day. Unable to bear watching a child go hungry, he made up the story so she could eat without feeling guilty. The woman ended her confession by thanking the late hawker for giving a little girl who could only afford instant noodles the chance to enjoy a warm meal every day for two years.
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One employee was awarded more than S$17,000. She had submitted reimbursement claims totalling almost S$10,000 for things such as vitamins, supplements and skincare items that were not ordered by a doctor. https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sin...Mu6FJRN4_-8hf8gFx8_aem_kTx6CaWUfSh4mEfO12H06A SINGAPORE: Six of 40 employees who were dismissed after a company mounted an internal review of staff members' medical-benefit claims have been awarded "substantial compensation", after a tribunal found that they had been dismissed wrongfully. The company has filed applications to appeal the tribunal's decision in all six cases. The exact compensation figure was not revealed in a judgment published on Friday (May 15) that anonymised the names of the parties and company involved. The non-disclosure of names is typical in Employment Claims Tribunals cases. What the tribunal magistrate focused on was the details of one of the six winners named only as Ms C, who was awarded more than S$17,000 (close to US$13,400). Ms C had submitted 62 reimbursement claims totalling almost S$10,000 between March and September in 2023 for things such as vitamins, supplements and skincare items, without consulting a doctor. In December 2023, the unnamed company started an internal review of employee medical-benefit claims, after concerns arose about the possible misuse of outpatient medical entitlements. This was prompted by a high volume of claims submitted for sums incurred at a clinic referred to in the judgment as "Clinic X". Some employees were suspected of having sought reimbursement for retail items that cannot be claimed under the company's medical and dental benefits policy. As part of the review, many workers were investigated and it was found that many of them had made claims for reimbursement that were not permissible under company policy. The company grouped the workers into tiers, issuing some of them notices to attend a disciplinary inquiry before a disciplinary committee. At the end, about 40 employees were dismissed after the disciplinary committee assessed that they had intentionally, wilfully or dishonestly committed serious breaches of company policy by making impermissible claims. Of the 40, eight filed claims in the Employment Claims Tribunals, mainly contending that they had been wrongfully dismissed. One withdrew her case and another proceeded to trial. The remaining six had their cases heard by the same tribunal magistrate, Mr Jared Kang Chern Wey. The six had been given notice of their dismissal in mid-April 2024, with the notice running until mid-July 2024. Each of them had sought an appeal against the company's disciplinary committee's findings, but no appeal committee was convened. Mr Kang said in his judgment that it would "serve neither clarity nor economy to produce six largely repetitive sets of grounds". Instead, he focused on Ms C's case. WHAT HER CASE SHOWS Ms C started working with the company in September 2021 under a contract that provided three months' notice of termination. Her use of Clinic X came about in 2023. The year before, she had not made any reimbursement claims for purchases at Clinic X. She said that her buys comprised mostly vitamins, supplements and skincare items, which she had submitted under the claims labelled "self". She had not consulted a doctor at Clinic X for these. She told the company's disciplinary committee that she first learned about Clinic X from a colleague, who said that many employees went there and made claims for similar purchases. She also said that the clinic's personnel had advised her to keep each receipt below S$200, because amounts under that threshold did not need to be itemised for reimbursement. Ms C said she thought this meant that such claims were permissible. She believed that her claims were consistent with prevailing practice and she had not intended to deceive her company. She also agreed to repay the full amount once informed that her claims were not in order, and she deeply regretted the lapse. The disciplinary committee found that Ms C had made repeated claims for items that were "plainly non-medical" in nature and these could not reasonably have been regarded as "claimable" under company policy. The committee noted that the pattern of her purchases – 62 transactions over seven months, typically just below S$200 – showed a "sustained and deliberate disregard" for the policy's requirements. It also found that there was a "serious breach of policy" and that Ms C had committed the breach "intentionally and dishonestly". It recommended that she be issued a letter of warning along with a "100 per cent reduction of her performance bonus for 2023". The company's global head of human resources expressed concern that the finding of dishonesty was not consistent with such a lenient sanction and asked the disciplinary committee to reconsider its recommendation. The committee reconvened within the day and revised its recommendation to termination. Ms C was issued a notice of termination the next day with three months' notice. However, about a month later, in May 2024, the company informed her that her employment would be terminated with immediate effect, with all sums due to her paid accordingly. She later filed claims for wrongful dismissal, for compensation of about S$26,000, and payment for her performance bonus for 2023 in the sum of S$13,000. She began searching for work and was candid at job interviews about the circumstances of her departure from her previous job, but remained unemployed until as late as August 2025. TRIBUNAL'S FINDINGS Mr Kang the magistrate said that the company had framed the termination of Ms C as misconduct aggravated by dishonesty, so the burden was on the company to prove it. He noted that there was no indicator in the employer's case that Ms C knew the claims were impermissible and she pressed on nonetheless. There was no acknowledgement of her having received training on submitting claims, no warning that she had accepted and ignored, no attempt at concealment and no admission. The company's approach also assumed clarity of policy at the time, but if this was so, the fact that a large number of financially literate workers made the same kind of counter-purchase claims would be surprising, Mr Kang added. This was not a case of large, disguised benefits either, with the typical claim being "modest", Mr Kang said. Ms C had also submitted claims through ordinary channels using receipts and did not alter documents, backdate forms or seek to bypass checks. When the review flagged concerns, she accepted that there were no doctor consultations and offered to repay. "Those were not the actions of an employee pursuing concealment; they fit an employee who believed she was within bounds and, once corrected, attempted to make amends," Mr Kang said. He added that the company's disciplinary committee had given a characterisation of Ms C that "sat awkwardly with a finding of dishonesty". It recorded her as junior and "simple-minded", following what she had been told by her colleagues and the clinic. Mr Kang said the evidence did not show that Ms C was dishonest, reckless or wilfully blind. Instead, the evidence supported "a lesser wrong", that she was negligently making impermissible claims by relying on practice rather than formal policy. The magistrate pointed to the company's evidence, which showed that people with broadly comparable spending patterns were not uniformly dismissed. He said it was difficult to justify singling Ms C out for dismissal on a lesser basis, when others with similar conduct profiles received lesser sanctions. He found that the company had not proven its case, and that although Ms C had committed the "lesser wrong", it did not amount to just cause or excuse for dismissal. Mr Kang awarded Ms C three months' worth of income she would have earned had she not been dismissed, as well as a sum for harm caused by the wrongful dismissal. He declined to award the performance bonus she sought, since it was discretionary and was not a contractual entitlement. The total sum awarded to her came to S$17,332, on top of added costs and disbursements of S$1,070. Mr Kang noted the law governing wrongful dismissals has "become a little more layered, difficult and unclear" than it needs to be. This was after the Employment (Amendment) Act 2018 (Number 55 of 2018) was passed, and the jurisdiction to decide certain employee claims – including those involving pregnant employees – was transferred from the relevant minister to the Employment Claims Tribunals, and parliament chose to call the linked disputes "wrongful dismissal disputes", he added. This label, attached to two very different claims, has been the source of some conceptual confusion, which in turn produced a lack of clarity as to which principles and propositions of law both the Employment Claims Tribunals and the courts are to apply in deciding such claims, Mr Kang wrote in his judgment. "In my view, the law needs clarification, especially given the high volume of 'wrongful dismissal' claims dealt with by the Employment Claims Tribunals and the corresponding risk of inconsistency a lack of clarity can create."
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