Smoking in Japan sometimes can also cost you your salary. A civil servant in Japan’s Osaka has been levied with a heft fine of 1.44 million yen (approximately Rs 9 lakh) after getting caught smoking during work hours. A report by Straits Times suggests that the government employee was found doing what’s considered a vice over 4,500 times in his work term of 14 years. The punishment was levied on a 61-year-old employee along with his two other colleagues. Reportedly, all of them work in the prefecture’s finance department.
The punishment for the violation includes a 10 per cent pay cut for the next six months. The employee had been given multiple warnings before he was charged for the behavioural violation. The investigation began back in the month of September last year when the human resource team of their office got a
However, it did not budge any of them, and in a follow-up interview months later, the trio also refrained from admitting that they used to smoke during work hours. Things turn way worse for the 61-year-old worker, who has a director-level position at the firm. Under the Local Public Service Act, the elderly’s misdemeanours violated the ‘duty of devotion.’ An estimation claims that he clocked up about 355 hours and 19 minutes of smoking while on duty.
It was back in 2008 when Osaka introduced a total ban on smoking on government premises which included public schools and offices. In addition to this, since 2019, government employees have been strictly forbidden from indulging in smoking during work hours.
Japan is known for its disciplined work culture. Previously, some government employees in the country had to face hefty fines for logging out 3 minutes early than the shift end times. The Funabashi City Board of Education in the Chiba Prefecture found that the employees had 300 early departures between May 2019 and January 2021. Additionally, many of these employees had written false times on their cards to log out early.
After the incident came to light, the senior most employee of this lot was fined one-tenth of her salary for three months. The 59-year-old was reportedly logging out at 5.15 PM, 2 minutes early than the scheduled time to catch the bus home at 5:17 PM.
Read all the Latest Buzz News here
Comments
0 comment