Abdul Kadir Sulaiman JCA:

This is an appeal from the decision of the High Court dismissing the application of the appellant for certiorarito quash the award of the second respondent, Mahkamah Perusahaan Malaysia, No. 132 of 1997 dated 25 March 1997. The said award arose out of a reference made by the Minister of Human Resources, Malaysia under s. 20(3) of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 relating to the dismissal of the first respondent, Maimunah bte Ahmad, by the appellant, effective from 26 March 1992.

According to the term of the award, "It is the court's decision that from the totality of the evidence adduced the company (the appellant here) only based on suspicion and speculation to charge the claimant (the first respondent here) and as such their decision to dismiss the claimant was totally baseless without just cause and excuse".

The events leading to the dismissal of the first respondent by the appellant, are that following an internal investigation carried out, the first respondent was made to appear before the appellant's board of inquiry on 11 and 12 February 1992 on two charges as follows:

1. That you received $400.00 from Aladdin bin Mohd. Hashim, knowing that this sum was part of the money received from Company's contractors, Oilfield Resources Sdn. Bhd. or its representatives in return for assistance rendered in relation to payment of that contractor's invoice in contravention of the Company's Gift and Entertainment Policy and the Conflict of Interest Policy.

2. That you concealed and failed to disclose to the Company's Management, the existence of irregular business practices and/or violation by employee and/or yourself, of the above-mentioned Company's policies.

The internal board of inquiry after a hearing found both charges against the first respondent proved. Following that, by a letter dated 26 March 1992, the appellant informed the first respondent that the management "views the gravity of your misconduct very seriously and after due consideration, has decided to terminate your employment with the company with immediate effect".

Before the High Court, in support of the application for certiorari, the appellant based its grounds on rejection of certain evidence and wrong application of the burden of proof by the second respondent, and on a jurisdictional error committed in the course of the hearing before it leading to the making of the award.

The learned judge in disposing the matter, gathered from his grounds of judgment, after laying out the facts of the case made comment on the charges meted out against the first respondent before the domestic inquiry. Having said that the two charges are criminal or semi-criminal in nature, the learned judge went on:

To come back to the two charges proffered against the 1st Respondent, they did not contain the particulars of date, time and place the offences were alleged to have been committed. They are material particulars which must be stated in the charges.

It is trite law that in a criminal or quasi-criminal charge, the burden of proof is always placed on the prosecution or the party that alleges. And as I had said earlier, it is also the duty of the prosecution to frame a charge and ensure all the material particulars including date, time and place of the alleged offence are contained in the charge. In other words on the wordings of the charge as framed, the 1st Respondent would be able to know exactly when the alleged offences were committed by her. The Applicant (the appellant here) could not and must not assume that the 1st Respondent knew all the particulars in respect of the charges. As regard the two charges proffered against the 1st Respondent the Applicant failed to state the date, time and place the offence was alleged to have been committed by the 1st Respondent. The failure of stating such material particulars would render the charges bad. It must be pointed that in a criminal or quasi-criminal case defects to the charge may be raised at any