Godwin Okolie, a former supervisor at Kingstine-JO Foods in Lagos State, has shared how the company suspended him indefinitely despite owing him two months’ salaries.

FIJ learned that Okolie’s duties included sending orders to the company’s warehouse manager to restock the store he supervised in the Ijegun area.

On May 3, he received a query for telling the managing director of the eatery that he placed an order for pet drinks the previous day when he did not.

Copies of the query, as well as the subsequent suspension letter issued on that same May 3, showed that the company deemed Okolie’s claim an act of deceit and dishonesty, considering that he was a member of the management staff.

For this reason, he was placed on indefinite suspension without pay, pending the decision of the management.

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Okolie, who did not dispute the company’s decision to have him suspended, told FIJ that Kingstine-Jo Foods owed him March and April’s salaries and failed to pay before the suspension in May.

Months later, he still has not been paid.

FIJ further learned that he was redeployed and promoted to the role of a senior supervisor at Ago two days before his suspension.

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“I started working with them in 2018. Though I started as a cleaner, I later became a supervisor and then a senior supervisor. Whenever we needed to stock up the store, we would write the order and send to the warehouse manager in charge via WhatsApp,” Okolie told FIJ.

“I thought I placed an order for pet Coke, but, somehow, I didn’t, and when they asked me, I said I did. I got queried because of that. But they are owing me March and April salaries.

“I had to do cryptocurrency and forex trading just so I could survive during that period.

“Even for January and February, they deducted my pay. My salary was N50,000, but I was only paid N36,960 in January and N16,180 in February. Apart from tax and shortage/lateness deduction, I also got debited for what I don’t know about.”

Checks through his payslips for those months revealed that while N1,000 was deducted for tax and N1,650 for shortage/lateness in each month, there was an unexplained deduction of N10,360 in January and N31,170 in February.

Okolie also said that when he messaged the admin officer about the unpaid salaries, the admin officer simply asked him to come to the office.

When FIJ called Emmanuel Ohuruogu, the admin officer, last week, he maintained that Okolie had to come to the office for him to be paid. This, according to him, would give Okolie an avenue to seek clarification on the pay he would receive.

“I have asked him to come to the office to reconcile his account. He said he wasn’t around, and I said he should come to the office anytime he’s around,” Ohuruogu said.

“If he had come to the office, he would have been paid. The essence of coming is that if there are any questions, we can clarify the whole issue. Nobody drove him away from the office. He was only suspended. If he comes, we’ll pay him, and he’ll sign.

“We are not saying we won’t pay him. He’s the one who has not made out time to come. There might be a reason for him to ask questions. Nothing more than that.”

In response to why there were ‘strange’ deductions in his January and February salaries, the admin officer said, “There were a lot of excessive minuses in the products we sent to them, and when we find that minuses are not genuine but are out of negligence or wickedness, we’ll have to share the [payment for the] minus among the management of the outlet.”

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The admin officer also said Okolie had nothing to fear when our reporter noted that insisting on having him come to the office before paying him seemed suspicious.

However, the suspended supervisor told FIJ it would be a waste of time to go since the company can easily send his unpaid salaries into his bank account and equally give clarification online without the hassle of visiting the office.

On Friday, July 26, Okolie went to the office, where he was given an invoice for the unpaid two-month salaries. “But they said they will make the payment on or before Monday.”

However, FIJ can confirm that Kingstine-Jo Foods had not paid him as of Tuesday morning. “They did not pay but said they will get back to me,” Okolie said.