Published 21st Mar, 2024

By Tola Owoyele

Tina Dilibe, a Nigerian sonographer residing in Swansea, Wales, has been awarded £33,611 by an employment tribunal after she was threatened and racially harassed by her employers at Window to the Womb, a leading private baby scan clinic in the country.

According to WalesOnline, Dilibe was consistently forced to work as a cleaner at the clinic’s premises, despite being employed as a sonographer, a medical role that involved the use of ultrasound for diagnostic medical imaging.

Dilibe, who was the only medically qualified staff member of the clinic at the time, was made to work both job roles for nine months until she decided to resign in 2021, when she could no longer cope with the harsh treatments she was constantly being subjected to.

The clinic’s four superior officers fingered in the accusation of ill-treatment were Anthony Woodcock, Juliet Luporini, Jeanette Clewes and Sophie Cartwright.

Tribunal records showed that the Swansea clinic decided to hire a full-time qualified sonographer in 2020, having previously hired contractors for the role.

When the clinic’s employers heard about how successful other franchisees had been in recruiting highly qualified sonographers from abroad, especially from Nigeria, they quickly offered Dilibe the job in March 2021.

A few months into the job, and when Dilibe complained about being made to do the cleaning job she was not hired to do, the directors of the clinic threatened to sack her and have her deported to Nigeria if she did not do as she was told.

Apart from her work as a sonographer, Dilibe was consistently made to vacuum the entire clinic premises and also mop the floor of the scanning room.

Dilibe had to work six days, contrary to the agreement that was stated in her offer letter that she would only work five days a week.

At one point, Dilibe became “exhausted” from a lack of rest days. She was only allowed to take six days of vacation on dates decided by the business, and she never received additional pay for working extra days.

Apart from tribunal evidence that showed regular attempts were made to punish Dilibe, her probation period was also extended without any clear reason.

The probation period extension clearly contradicted the positive reviews the clinic had received from the customers Dilibe had attended to.

In November 2021, the sonographer was further subjected to an unfounded body-odour accusation by one of her superiors.

Claire Sharp, the employment tribunal judge who presided over the matter, was forced to agree that Dilibe’s ill-treatment was racially motivated when it became clear that the clinic’s non-black or African sonographers had never been asked to add menial jobs to their roles.

The judge said Woodcock and Luporini, who are both directors at the clinic, had a perception that they “owned” Dilibe. The two directors were also found to have made false testimonies while the tribunal lasted.

“You have to be careful; these Africans tell lies. These Africans all have hygiene problems; it is a real problem for us to deal with,” Clewes, the clinic’s manager, was also reported to have said of Dilibe at the tribunal.

The tribunal noted Clewes’ comments as astonishing and racist, despite her being a clinical lead for sonographers. She was said to have also repeated the same racist comments at the hearing.

Following Dilibe’s resignation in December 2021, Woodcock demanded she repay her recruitment costs in full within 24 hours. She was also sent an invoice for £5,975.25 with the threat that legal action would be taken against her if she did not make the repayment on time.

In the end, the judge ordered the clinic to pay Dilibe £28,915.08 for racial harassment and direct race discrimination. She also directed Window to the Womb to pay the Nigerian £2,538.40 for the unauthorised deduction of wages and another £2,157.64 for unpaid annual leave.

Window to the Womb has 53 clinics across the UK.

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