Legal consultation: by Abdelaal A Khalil Thursday, 14 April 2011 01:28

Question: A teacher working in a school on contract basis for a year which ended on 11.10.2010 but just before a month of expiration of the contract received a letter from the school management stating the contract is extended for another academic year according to the conditions stated in the previous contract. The school breached the contract and ended his service on 04/02/2011 under the pretext that the work contract is over and when he pointed out to the letter issued by them which talked about the renewal of the last academic year the school management told him that this letter is not a renewal of the contract! He wants to know if he can file a case in the court against the school and whether the above-mentioned letter is a commitment to renew the contract of employment according to the Labour Law or not?

Answer: The Labour Law No. (14) of 2004 on a fixed-term employment contract points out that if the employment contract is for a fixed term it must not be more than five years and this period may be renewed for a period or other similar periods with the agreement of both parties.

If the contract is not renewed and both the parties continued to execute the same after its expiration without any explicit agreement the contract is considered as renewed one for an indefinite period with the conditions contained therein and the renewal period is considered as an extension of the previous period.

If we apply for the provision to the above-mentioned facts, we find that the employment contract between the teacher and the school is a fixed-term contract and it was supposed to expire on 10.11.2010 and this contract has been renewed for a similar period with an official letter issued by the school for the teacher stating the desire of the school to extend the contract of employment for another academic year and this letter shall be considered as an explicit agreement to renew the contract for a similar period.

Therefore, the concerned person may appeal in the competent Labour Court to demand his dues until the end of the contract. Without the consent of the teacher is a breach of the terms of the contract and it must pay the entire dues to the teacher until the date of expiry of the contract unless there are special conditions in the employment contract that allows termination of the contract unilaterally.

Question: An employee got a cash loan from one of the banks operating in Qatar with the guarantee that the company shall transfer the monthly salary of the employee to the bank and the bank shall deduct the installment on monthly basis. After a period the company ended the services of the employee without any cause and his monthly salary stopped going to the bank. The employee still deposits the value of the monthly payment in the bank every month as he does not want to disturb his liabilities towards the bank in the hope that he will find an appropriate job and continue to transfer the salary to pay the rest of the loan installments in a normal way. But to his utter surprise, the bank filed a lawsuit against him asking the borrower to pay the rest of the value of the loan and the legal benefits immediately. He now wants to know how to defend himself from this situation?

Answer: There is no doubt that everyone has the right to move the judiciary regardless of the validity of his claim or not. In this case we find that the bank shall demand the borrower to pay the entire debt if the debtor “borrower” failed to pay any installment. Therefore, in this case the bank has to prove that the borrower did not pay the installment on deadline and the borrower who has been regular in the payment of monthly installments through the deposit, He has to submit to the court that proves he was paying under the depository receipts, whether by ATM or deposit in the bank directly in addition to the statement of borrower’s account in the bank showing the regularity of the client to pay the monthly installments and on this basis the lawsuit filed by the bank shall be worthy of rejection.