Sikh priest claims he was exploited and slandered by Kiwi boss

Sunday, 3 March 2019

Sikh priest Kultar Singh claims he has been exploited and slandered by the Sikh Sangat NZ Trust.

A battle is brewing in the Sikh community as a priest and one of the religion's larger organisations in New Zealand prepare to face off.

An Indian preacher has accused his former employer, the Sikh Sangat NZ Trust, of exploitation and wrongful dismissal. He claimed he was grossly underpaid, made to live in cell-like conditions at a Rotorua temple, denied annual leave to visit his wife in India, then fired over a falsified affair with a married templegoer.

Sukhpreet Singh and Kunal Bhalla from the Sikh Sangat Trust admit the trust has withheld money from Kultar Singh, but deny they are in the wrong.

Last week Kultar Singh, 34, filed a police complaint against the trust's founder and secretary alleging they had made threats on his life.

Sikh Sangat NZ Trust secretary Sukhpreet Singh has denied all allegations. He in turn filed a police complaint against Kultar Singh claiming the priest had defrauded the trust and stolen more than $20,000 of cash donations from the temple.

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Sukhpreet Singh insisted the priest was 'playing the exploitation card'.

Kultar Singh said he was not a thief and had reported the Sikh Sangat NZ Trust to the the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, which is investigating the case.

BREAKING THE LAW

The priest was suspended from his job without pay on December 8 and his contract was terminated on January 15. The trust has yet to pay him out for more than four weeks of unused annual leave – which employment lawyer Steph Dyhrberg said is 'definitely illegal' under the Wages Protection Act.

She said there was an expectation in New Zealand that employees still received their normal salary if they had been suspended from work.

Sukhpreet Singh admitted the trust was 'withholding' the priest's dues. He claimed Kultar Singh stole donations from the temple and therefore owed the trust more than it owed him.

That would be sorted out through mediation via lawyers, he said.

Even if Kultar Singh was a thief, Dyhrberg said his employer broke the law by withholding pay. It was wrong of the trust to consider money owing from and owed to employees to be from the same pool.

'It's very straightforward: the employer would have a civil claim against the employee and that would be a separate issue,' she said.

A CRAMPED AND WINDOWLESS ROOM

A different Sikh organisation invited Kultar Singh to New Zealand in 2015 to work as a priest. In 2016 he transferred to a student visa and embarked on an English language course.

The Sikh Sangat NZ Trust then offered Kultar Singh a job at its temple in Rotorua starting in August 2017. He would live on-site, sleeping in a cramped and windowless room with a large mural of the moon on one wall.

Apart from a single bed, there was no furniture. Kultar Singh said he kept his clothes in a suitcase throughout his 17-month tenure.

The trust and Kultar Singh agreed he was employed to work 35 hours per week at $16.50 an hour with accommodation and meals provided for free at the temple. They disagreed over whether he was contracted to work weekends.

Each provided Stuff with what they claimed was Kultar Singh's original contract, but Kultar Singh's version stated he would work Monday to Friday and the trust's stated he would work seven days a week.

The Sikh Sangat NZ Trust's headquarters in Clover Park, south Auckland.

Both parties agreed Kultar Singh did work weekends. Neither could explain the discrepancy in the contracts, but one obtained from Immigration New Zealand was the same at Kultar Singh's.

Kultar Singh said weekends were just the tip of the iceberg as far as unpaid overtime was concerned. He would start work at 4am and often not finish until late at night, he said.

He claimed he worked more than 85 hours a week, including public holidays, with no extra compensation. The trust, he claimed, denied him sick leave and refused all requests made for annual leave to visit his homeland.

His duties entailed preparing and serving food, prayers, handling donations, and interacting with devotees.

While Kultar Singh received about $2000 take home pay each month, he said he verbally agreed to pay back more than half of that – leaving him with $800 a month. He claimed the trust told him he had to return the bulk of his salary in cash to the trust if he wanted it to help with his bid for permanent residency – a claim the trust denied.

'I felt pressured, but I thought it would be for the best in the long run,' he said through a translator.

Migrant Workers Association advocate Sunny Seghal says exploitation of migrant workers is 'very common'.

The trust is a registered charity which operates from its founder Gurinderpal Singh Brar's home in south Auckland.

Gurinderpal Singh Brar is currently in India.

Stuff was shown text messages between Kultar Singh and the trust's financial officer Delpreet Singh detailing fund transfers as of May 27, 2018. One equation showed a figure the same as Kultar Singh's official salary for the nine months up to that point, minus what his salary would have been had he been paid $800 per month.

Kultar Singh said the resulting figure was what he had paid or would pay back to the trust in cash. Messages between Kultar Singh and Sukhpreet Singh also showed the latter requesting money.

Delpreet Singh confirmed he remembered the messages, but not what the figures pertained to. Sukhpreet Singh denied the trust had ever asked Kultar Singh to return any of his salary.

He said that if any funds had been requested, they would have been donations Kultar Singh had collected from devotees at the temple and needed to hand over to the trust.

'EVERY SINGLE DAY'

Migrant Workers Association advocate Sunny Sehgal said his office heard an exploitation claim 'every single day'.

'It's very common. Employers put money into their employee's bank account as per contractual agreement, then threaten that if they don't give some back they will be deported'.

He said migrant workers' complaints over unpaid and undocumented overtime were also rife. Their lack of robust evidence made getting compensation hard.

Dyhrberg said 'the 'why didn't you raise this issue earlier' question' could make it hard for the workers to prove exploitation.

'They always wait until after things go really wrong.'

THE RELATIONSHIP SOURS

Things went wrong for Kultar Singh in late October 2018, when – he claimed – the trust asked him for $40,000 he didn't have. The money would help smooth his permanent residency process, he claimed he was told. Sukhpreet Singh denied that happened.

In November, a young woman with marital problems started spending time at the temple. Kultar Singh become her confidante, but said he had acted within his role as a priest to advise her on how to navigate an abusive husband.

Kultar Singh has provided Stuff with a signed statement from the woman saying the relationship was not romantic.

The trust saw it differently. Sukhpreet Singh said 'it was inappropriate behaviour for a preacher to intervene in a young couple's problems' and that he believed Kultar Singh wanted to marry the woman himself.

In early December, Sukhpreet Singh and Gurinderpal Singh Brar asked Kultar Singh to resign over the matter. Kultar Singh refused and said he believed the trust drummed up an excuse to get rid of him.

Professor Paul Spoonley of Massey University.

Days later, his contract was suspended. This came hours after an incident where Kultar Singh claimed Sukhpreet Singh and others associated with the Sikh Sangat NZ Trust threatened to have him deported to India and killed – something Sukhpreet denied – if he didn't resign on the spot.

Throughout December, the trust received complaints from temple goers about Kultar Singh. They included him having made a female devotee uncomfortable by showing her a non-religious video on his phone, being away from the temple for long periods during the day, skipping 4am prayer services and stealing donations.

The complaints provided to Stuff were all dated after December 8, but most referred to much earlier incidents.

Asked why devotees suddenly decided to come forward at that point, Sukhpreet Singh said they had been 'triggered' by Kultar Singh's conduct with the married woman. Kultar Singh himself believed it was because they were pressured by Sukhpreet Singh and Gurinderpal Singh Brar.

He provided Stuff with a with a recorded phone conversation, in Punjabi, between an ally of his and a former colleague from the temple. The colleague had submitted a slew of complaints against Kultar. When the ally asked why he'd done this, the colleague said he hadn't had a choice 'as [I] was surrounded by five people'.

Kultar Singh moved to Auckland before his contract was terminated on January 15. He said his ordeal had given him severe depression. Kultar Singh's supporters helped him create a Givealittle page to help pay for his upcoming legal expenses.

'[The Sikh Sangat NZ Trust] are trying their best to ruin my career,' he said. 'They are spreading slander and now people look at me with contempt, but I will fight for my reputation. The main thing is, I am not in the wrong'.

'NOBODY IS COVERED IN GLORY'

Massey University immigration professor Paul Spoonley said Kultar Singh's case highlighted the intrinsic power imbalance between employers and migrant workers.

The workers were vulnerable, he said: They often relied on employers for their visas, lacked an understanding of New Zealand's employment law and struggled with English so favoured verbal agreements in their own language.

They were under pressure to live up to a dream sold by the New Zealand government, the Migrant Workers Association said. This made workers willing to accept what they saw as short-term compromises such as paying back chunks of their salary and working extra hours.

Migrant employment experts also agreed workers playing the exploitation card was a known phenomenon too, and that sorting fact from fiction was a challenge in many cases.

Dyhrberg said investigations often revealed 'nobody is covered in glory'.