A culture of racist comments and laddish banter in the island’s fire and rescue service is tolerated by management, a tribunal has heard.

Firefighter Mark Versluijs was suspended and then sacked from his job at Douglas fire station following an incident on September 30 last year.

He was alleged to have made a monkey chant to a pedestrian while on duty in a fire engine as it was heading along Lord Street, Douglas.

Mr Versluijs, of Strang, Braddan, is claiming unfair dismissal and maintains his comment was directed not at the pedestrian but at a colleague who was ribbed for acting as a ’monkey’ for a station officer.

He also claims to have been a whistleblower who raised concerns about staffing issues, the employment tribunal heard as it got under way on Friday.

A firefighter who was sitting next to Mr Versluijs in the fire engine at the time of the incident told the hearing: ’I felt I should say something. I felt quite shocked at the time. I didn’t agree with it.’

The tribunal heard evidence of WhatsApp messages on Mr Versluijs’s phone shared between members of Blue Watch which included monkey pictures and emojis.

Another message included a picture of bananas on a locker at the fire station.

The tribunal heard that a leading firefighter was referred to as ’Macca’s monkey’, for acting as a dogsbody and doing the run-around for the station officer.

Asked about the monkey images on the Blue Watch WhatsApp, the witness said the leading firefighter was going to be ’someone’s monkey’.

He said: ’It was just a running joke. It was something he came up with himself.

’He liked to be a bit of a clown and probably instigated most of it.’

Asked why the incident on Lord Street was different from the WhatsApp monkey messages, the witness replied Mr Versluijs’s monkey noise wasn’t directed at the leading firefighter but at a pedestrian outside the fire engine.

’I’m all for a laugh with the lads but that’s too far. It’s just not right.

’The window was open. Anyone in the street could have seen me in the back of the truck and they could have thought it was me.’

The witness confirmed he had not seen the pedestrian until the fire engine was next to him.

He said Mr Versluijs was a practical joker who ’probably thought he was being funny’.

The witness was asked about another message shared by a sub-officer to the Blue Watch group, which included a pejorative reference to people of south east Asian descent.

It was suggested to him by Mr Versluijs’s advocate that there was a ’tolerance of racist comments both verbally and on social media in Blue Watch’.

The tribunal heard that nicknames were common place among many levels of management in the fire service.

The firefighters also played practical jokes.

A second witness said he was asked to go through McDonald’s car park in his chemical protection suit to retrieve an item from the river bank.

He had assumed it was part of his training but actually it ’was to make me look stupid’.

The tribunal heard that chief fire officer Kevin Groom met with Blue Watch, apparently at the instigation of Mr Versluijs, in February 2018 to hear concerns about inadequate experience on some watches.

A number of firefighters were considering leaving the service and a number were disgruntled about training obligations. Training the influx of new recruits meant they could not take as much time off.

Mr Versluijs was one of a number of firefighters who had temporarily been ’acting up’ to the junior officer role of leading firefighter for six months up to November 2017.

A standard watch has eight firefighters and any two can be off at any one time except a sub officer and leading firefighter.

Crews had apparently been told that if the number drops to five due to sickness or training, there should be a maximum of one probationer on duty.

But the tribunal heard claims that there were occasions when Blue Watch was left with a junior officer and four or five unqualified firefighters, three of which were probationers.

The employment tribunal was scheduled to continue tomorrow (Friday), when Mr Versluijs was due to give evidence.

Tribunal chairman Douglas Stewart said a written decision would be made ’as soon as we reasonably can’.