HRMI Board Chair Kestutis Cilinskas, acting on behalf of HRMI, lodged an appeal to the Chief State Labour Inspector against the conclusions of the regional Labour inspection office in Panevezys. The appeal states that although inspectors did not find any procedural violations, Dalia Budreviciene was clearly fired in violation to the established procedure.
Few days after Ms. Budreviciene was fired, the regional Labour Inspection in Panevezys has announced that she was dismissed properly, without procedural violations. The employer “Krekenavos agrofirma” stated that D. Budreviciene has been fired for “disseminating to the media false allegations regarding the illegal salary payments” and for accepting the allowance of 3000 Litas form the Civil Society Institute.
In his appeal to the Chief Inspector K. Cilinskas criticized the investigation done by Panevezys department emphasizing that the inspectors performed a single-sided evaluation based solely on the version of the employer. HRMI Board Chair presented detailed arguments how the dismissal procedure of D. Budreviciene violated the Labour Code and contradicted relevant decisions of the Supreme Court.
Moreover K. Cilinskas stated that “Inspection officials clearly went beyond their commission judging on the legitimacy of the dismissal itself, and by justifying it they had sent a clear signal to other employees to keep their mouths shut, as the state institutions won’t protect the rights of the whistle-blowers.”
HRMI Board Chair raises a question of whether officials were not influenced by the fact that the main stakeholders in the company are major figures in Lithuanian politics – leader of the ruling party and the Vice-Chair of the Parliament. “There is more at stake in this case than just a dispute over the dismissal of one of the employees,” he said. “ Dismissal of Ms. Budreviciene and reaction of state institutions that followed it represents a clear case of a deep rooted conflict between the democratic governance based on the rule law, on the one hand, and the rule by oligarch, on the other.”
HRMI issued a public statement that presents in detail the arguments why the dismissal procedure was improper and why the conclusions by regional branch of the State Labour Inspection were biased.
See full text of public statement (in Lithuanian) here.
See more about the appeal on the news portals Delfi and Vtv.
© 2012 Human Rights Monitoring Institute