JUDGMENT

Faiza Tamby Chik J:

This is an application for the orders of certiorariand mandamusin respect of Industrial Court Award No. 620 of 1999, made in Case No. 7/4-314/1998. The brief facts are as follows: The applicant commenced employment with the 1st respondent (hereinafter referred to as 'the company') as a sales executive, with effect from 17 January 1997. By a letter dated 30 September 1997 the company dismissed the applicant from service. The contents of the letter are as follows:

Due to various verbal warning as well as two (2) written warning you have chose to ignore the Company's regulations. You have even threaten to smear the Company image to the public place. I am afraid that the TN Forklift Holdings Sdn. Bhd. have taken this threat seriously and therefore you have been terminated as a Sales Executive from this establishment from today. You will be paid a month salaryin lieuto your termination. This will be paid to you after all your income tax has been cleared.

You will not be allowed to trade under the TN Forklift Holdings Sdn. Bhd. name or do any transaction under the name. Serious action will be taken against you if these incident occurs.

The above letter was dated 30 September 1997. The two warning letters referred therein were dated 18 September 1997 and 27 September 1997, and can be found on pp. 96 and 97 of the affidavit of Shanker Subbramaniam, dated 30 March 2000 (hereinafter referred to as the second affidavit). The matter was referred to the Industrial Court, and Award No. 620 of 1999 was handed down, dismissing the applicant's claim that he had been unfairly dismissed. This award is being impugned now.

Ground 1

The second Respondent, in arriving at the decision that the Applicant was guilty under charges 1 and 2, committed an error of law and acted outside its jurisdiction when it failed to take into account or give due consideration to relevant facts and/or it arrived at an unreasonable decision that would not have been reached by any other tribunal or body similarly circumstanced.

The Industrial Court broke up the charges against the applicant into 5. The 1st charge is concerning annual leave, whereby the company contended that the applicant had been warned for infringing the company's rules by not making his application for leave three days in advance. The company's pleadings in respect of this charge are on para. 6 of the statement in reply (p. 17 of lampiran 3). According to the company the claimant had, on 15 September 1997, submitted leave applications for 16 and 17 September 1997. The application was supposedly rejected. The company claimed that the applicant absented himself on 16 September 1997. The applicant was issued a warning letter on 18 September 1997 (p. 96 of 2nd affidavit). The applicant contended that he had submitted the application for leave much earlier than on 15 September 1997, and that one day's leave, ie, on 16 September 1997, had been approved. The manager (COW1) had in fact signed in the approved column. COW1 claimed in court that he had written "not approved", but it is clear from the document itself that these words had been crossed out.

The relevant form is on p. 101 of the 2nd affidavit. The Industrial Court made a finding (on p. 3 of the award) that the reason for the words "not approved" being cancelled out was not explained by COW1. The court went on to observe as follows (p. 3 of the award, p. 52 of lampiran 3):

This particular exhibit [COA11 (A)] is not helpful to the Court, because if "Not Approved" has not deleted, it will be clear to the Court that COW1 has not approved the leave. The Court is not able to make a definite conclusion on who really tampered or deleted the "Not Approved" on COA11(a). The Court also noted that it could not accept the Applicant's contention that he had left the date on the application blank.

The passages from the award shows that, on the evidence before it, the Industrial Court did not arrive at a conclusion as to whether or not the leave wa