HEALTH bosses who unfairly dismissed a union activist have refused to let him back to work despite being told to do so.

An employment tribunal in April found that Yunus Bakhsh had the right to get his job back, five years after he was first suspended amid claims of bullying colleagues.

Executives at Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Trust suspended and then dismissed Mr Bakhsh after they received anonymous complaints against him.

But last summer a tribunal ruled that Mr Bakhsh’s sacking was a reaction to his activity with the trade union Unison and that he had been the victim of disability discrimination.

And in a rare ruling, employment judges ordered his former employers to re-hire him through an “order of re-engagement” by June 30 after deeming their evidence “not credible”.

But when Mr Bakhsh turned up expecting to resume his career, he says he was handed a letter from the Trust’s human resources department and told he would not be returning.

Mr Bakhsh said he was “hurt and humiliated” at being told to leave the Trust’s premises – St Nicholas’ Hospital in Gosforth, Newcastle – when he had hoped to become a practising nurse again.

The trust insists it could not offer the 50-year-old his job back because there were management concerns over his registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council.

Mr Baksh, from Sunniside in Gateshead, said: “I attended St Nick’s at 9am on June 30 because that’s what the tribunal ordered. I was fully expecting, after any necessary training to bring me up to speed, that I would be a nurse again.

“I was kept waiting for an hour before being summoned to the HR reception when I was handed a letter. I was basically asked ‘what are you doing here?’ as if I was trespassing or something.