Justice Veronic Wrights of the Appeals Court has rejected an application filed by the Gambia Tourism Board to delay the reinstatement of a staff the High Court ruled was wrongly dismissed.
The staff, Lamin Bojang, had sued GTBoard for wrongfully terminating his contract in 2022.
The High Court presided over by Justice Sidi K Jobarteh declared his dismissal as wrong and unlawful and awarded him a cost of D30,000, in addition to an order for him to be reinstated and paid all his salaries and allowances with effect from April 2022.
However, the GTBoard filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal to challenge the ruling and followed it up with a motion to stop the execution of the judgment to reinstate and compensate Mr Bojang.
But in a ruling yesterday, Justice Wrights of the Court of Appeal said she agrees with the High Court’s position that GT Board’s application for a stay of execution was ‘incompetent’ and was ‘rightly rejected’ by the High Court since the requirements of Order 43 Rule 18(3) of the High Court Rules are mandatory and should be complied with by GT Board.
“For the above reasons, I find the application before us for a stay of execution of the judgment of the High Court incompetent and it is hereby dismissed,” Justice Wright ruled.
She also ordered payment of D50,000 as cost to Lamin Bojang.
The ruling was endorsed by two other justices of the Court of Appeal namely, Justice Basiru VP Mahoney and Justice Amina Saho Ceesay.
Source: The Standard Newspaper
