Wednesday

Forfeiture or encashment of Annual Leave for termination?

If I extract this portion from MOM regarding annual leave.

I have a employee being terminated due to absent since 15 June 2012 until now and he is on a 5.5 working days.

based on the highlighted part in yellow, our company has to encashment his annual leave since he is not terminated due to misconduct.

Forfeiture of Annual Leave
An employee's annual leave entitlement can be forfeited if the employee:
i. Absents him/herself from work without permission or reasonable excuse for more than 20% of the working days in a month or year, as the case may be;
ii. Fails to take his/her leave within 12 months after the end of 12 months of continuous service; or
iii. Is dismissed on the grounds of misconduct.

Instead of forfeiting leave the employer may, at his/her discretion, encash the leave at the gross rate of pay based on the employee's last drawn salary.

If the termination of an employee's service is not on account of misconduct, the employer must pay him/her for every day of leave not taken, at the gross rate of pay based on the employee's last drawn salary.

Misconduct (usually indicated in the employment contract) arises when an employee fails to fulfill his conditions of employment, i.e. unauthorised possession of company property, abusive or insubordinate behaviour, negligence that raises questions on safety and security etc.

If your employee was absent without official leave approval (AWOL) for more than 2 consecutive days, did not contact the employer or did not provide any proper medical documentation, he breaches the employment contract. Employer could terminate the contract without giving notice to the employee nor paying salary in lieu of notice. The dismissed employee shall not be entitled to leave encashment.