An Indian-origin employer who withheld his employee’s $12,000 parental leave payment from Centrelink and then lied and deceived investigators has been slapped with a huge fine by the court.
NSW man Kulpreet Singh and his company have been penalised over $118,000 after he was found to have ‘deliberately’ deprived an Indian employee of her paid parental leave payments.
Mr Singh – the former manager and part-owner of the United Petroleum roadhouse at Marrangaroo, near Lithgow in New South Wales’ Central West region – has been penalised $19,720 while his company, Noorpreet Pty Ltd, where Mr Singh is a director, has been penalised a further $98,700.
He falsely claimed to the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) that he had paid the Centrelink parental leave payment to the employee’s husband in cash.
Source: Pixabay
The affected employee worked as a chef at the roadhouse on a 487 skilled regional employer nomination visa and is now an Australian citizen.
According to the Fair Work Commission, shhe was 29 when she had a child and the Department of Human Services (DHS) transferred $11,538 to Noorpreet in April 2015 for the company to transfer the payment to her.
She took up the matter with FWO after Mr Singh failed to pay the due amount.
When the Fair Work Ombudsman investigated, Singh provided a Fair Work inspector with a false document purporting to show that he paid the parental leave funds in cash to the employee’s husband in May 2015.
After the Fair Work Ombudsman challenged the veracity of the document and repeatedly demanded payment, Singh and Noorpreet eventually paid the parental leave funds to the employee in October 2015, more than five months after they were due.
However, he was taken to court by FWO after he and his company admitted committing a contravention of the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010, as well as a number of contraventions of record-keeping and pay slip laws under the Fair Work Act.
Source: Pixabay
Judge Nick Nicholls: Singh engaged in “deliberate deception”
According to the Fair Work Commission Judge Nicholls said Singh had tried to deceive and conceal the failure to pay the employee her parental leave pay and had sought to deceive and mislead government agencies.
Judge Nicholls said Singh had “lied” and that the failure to transfer the parental leave pay was “an express and active intervention” to deprive the employee of her payments.
“Mr Singh was, to be blunt, well and truly caught out by the FWO, perpetrating a deliberate falsehood in relation to the false payment record,” Judge Nicholls said.
Judge Nicholls found that Singh had not displayed any true remorse and that some of the excuses he made for not paying the Paid Parental Leave pay to the employee sooner were “absurd”.
Judge Nicholls also said that it was important to set a penalty that signals disapproval of the conduct and serves as a general deterrent to others in the hospitality industry.
Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James says withholding monies funded by Australian taxpayers from a vulnerable worker and telling blatant lies to the Fair Work Ombudsman is completely unacceptable conduct that deserves the strongest condemnation.
“New parents have enough on their minds without having to chase recalcitrant employers over their taxpayer-funded paid parental leave,” Ms James said.
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Employers and employees seeking assistance can visit , where information is available in 40 languages, or call the Fair Work Infoline on 13 13 94.
The Fair Work Ombudsman’s is aimed at tackling the persistent problem of underpayment of vulnerable workers by using geofencing technology to provide workers with a record of the time they spend at their workplace. The app can be downloaded from the App Store and Google Play.
In recognition that some employees are reluctant to complain about their workplace issues, the Fair Work Ombudsman now has an “Anonymous Report” function to allow the community to in English and 16 other languages.
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