1. ) ABDUL RAZAK BIN ABDUL AZIZ 2. ) SYED SALLEHUDDIN BIN SYED MOHAMAD 3. ) NAGARAJAH A/L SATHASIVAM 4. ) MOHD HARDI BIN MISWAN v RAI UTILITY SDN. BHD

Case Significance

Illustrates the evidential burden on employees claiming wages for a disputed period of work, where an absence of supervision and supporting documentation defeated the claim before the Director-General of Labour and on appeal.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam is an appeal from a decision of the Director-General of Labour on a wages claim brought by four employees against their employer company. The appellants had been engaged in various roles — including an information-technology manager, an IT project specialist, a finance and accounts manager and a head of department — under written contracts of employment, and their claim, advanced under provisions of the Employment Act 1955, turned on whether they were entitled to wages for a period running from January to September 2023. The central factual question was whether the appellants had in fact worked for the employer during that period, which they said had been spent on the employer’s project in Kelantan. The Court found the evidence wanting. Beyond some messaging records, the appellants produced no documentary proof of the Kelantan work, and their own evidence disclosed that they had not been supervised by anyone, prompting the Court to ask how they could be said to be working for the employer without supervision or any supporting documentation. It reasoned that genuine work on such a project would have generated reports or correspondence, and it noted that, by the time of the claim, the employer had come to be owned by other companies, engaging questions about the continuity of service, with reference to Dinacraft Industries Sdn Bhd v Kamaruddin bin Kana Mohd Sharif. Without proof that the appellants had worked for the employer in the relevant period — and taking into account that they had not worked elsewhere either — the Court found that they had not worked during January to September 2023. Concluding that the Director-General of Labour had made no error, the Court, per Shahnaz binti Sulaiman J, dismissed the appeal, affirmed the decision below and ordered costs of RM500 payable by each appellant. The judgment illustrates the evidential burden on employees claiming wages for a disputed period of work.