RFA Board Suspended

Tileni Mongudhi

24 June 2011

The Minister of Finance yesterday suspended the entire board of the Road Fund Administration and extended the suspension of its chief executive officer, fund manager and the accountant of the parastatal.

Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said in a letter to the board chairperson that her decision to suspend them is based on a request by the Auditor General to conduct his forensic audit unhindered.

Chairperson of the board Angelina Simana-Paolo confirmed receipt of the suspension letter, but would not comment.

The Auditor General, according to the minister, asked the board and the three officials to “recuse themselves by taking special leave from the daily activities of the RFA with immediate effect until 13 August (that is 60 days from the date I [the Auditor General] received the mandate”).

The board and the minister have been at odds with each other since the suspension of the CEO, Penda Kiiyala, and two other officials.

The relationship between the board and Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila is said to have reached an all-time low after a mediation effort by Prime Minister Nahas Angula could not reconcile to two sides.

Angula held a meeting with the board and the minister on Monday in an attempt to mediate in the ongoing spat between the appointing minister and the board.

The conclusion of the meeting, according to the minister, was that the “Cabinet decision will have to be complied with – that is what we agreed in the meeting”.

To the minister, complying with Cabinet decision means stopping the disciplinary process against the CEO and lifting the suspensions, which she insisted at the meeting.

But this was not the view of the board, which says that they are continuing with the disciplinary process as they have enough evidence against the CEO and two other officials who have been suspended.

The board felt that it did the right thing by suspending the CEO and two other managers and that the Auditor General’s probe is to look at the accuracy of two reports compiled by the board for the minister and to advice Cabinet on what should be done.

It is alleged that Kiiyala has direct access to the minister and disregards board instructions.

It appears that disciplinary steps against the CEO and the other officials do not only concern the collection of Cross Border Charges by Iroko Investments on behalf of RFA.

The Namibian is informed that the charges range from serious human resource breaches and performance issues to salary increases without board approval. Reliable sources say Kiiyala had increased his total salary package, including benefits, from N$1,6 million per year to N$2,1 million without the approval of the appointing authority.

Sources close to the strife told The Namibian that the board refused to cave into the minister’s demands to reinstate Kiiyala and to stop the disciplinary hearings at the Monday meeting.

The board is sticking to its guns and is adamant that it is well within its rights and is not acting maliciously.

In her suspension letter, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila said that the Auditor General advised her that “an informed decision will be taken as far as RFA is concerned” on the basis of his forensic report.

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has all along maintained that she was acting on Cabinet’s instructions, which ordered that the Auditor General should be the one to conduct a forensic audit into the RFA and then decide who should be suspended or disciplined.

However, the Auditor General’s request that the CEO and other two officials also be suspended goes against the wishes of the minister that the suspensions be lifted.

The board is said to have decided that it has sufficient evidence to put Kiiyala through a disciplinary hearing without the Auditor General’s findings.

Last week Kiiyala’s disciplinary hearing was postponed to August, after which his lawyers wrote a lengthy letter to Kuugongelwa-Amadhila and the Anti-Corruption Commission accusing the board of criminal and corrupt activities and that he was “being unlawfully punished for a being a whistleblower to theft and corruption by the board of directors.”

Kiiyala was suspended with immediate effect on Friday May 20 pending a disciplinary process. Also suspended are the company’s Fund Manager, Desmond Basson, and one of the accountants at the company, Talaska Katjiruru.

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