The company owning Ongwediva Medipark private hospital has been ordered to pay its dismissed managing director, medical doctor Tshali Iithete, N$3.3 million.
Ongwediva Medipark (Pty) Ltd should also reinstate Iithete in his position as managing director with effect from the start of December, labour arbitrator Moses Mazambo ordered in an arbitration award on Friday.
He also ordered that the company should pay Iithete 20 months’ salary as managing director, which he lost due to his dismissal, amounting to N$3.36 million.
Mazambo made the orders after finding that Iithete was unfairly dismissed as managing director of Ongwediva Medipark in September 2022.
Iithete was dismissed after a disciplinary hearing in which he was found guilty on charges of dishonesty, fraud, conflict of interest, failure to disclose interests and gross negligence.
Mazambo recounted in his arbitration award that Iithete was a co-founder of Ongwediva Medipark, with businessman David Imbili, and was the company’s managing director since July 2014.
During the arbitration hearing before Mazambo, the chairperson of Ongwediva Medipark’s board of directors, Riel du Toit, testified that Iithete entered into a business agreement with the company RentWorks Namibia on behalf of a subsidiary of Ongwediva Medipark, without authorisation from the company’s board.
In terms of that agreement, signed in March 2018, the subsidiary, Ongwediva Medipark Properties, sold intensive care unit and paediatric ward equipment to RentWorks.
Du Toit also testified that Iithete failed to disclose to Ongwediva Medipark that he had interests in a close corporation, Northern Surgical CC, which supplied equipment to the company.
Another witness, Matthias Braune, testified that an investigation of Ongwediva Medipark’s finances revealed “gross financial mismanagement” involving an amount of N$25 million that was not sanctioned by the company’s board of directors, and that the company was losing about N$11 million a month and at the brink of being liquidated before Iithete was suspended during 2021.
Mazambo noted that Du Toit investigated allegations of mismanagement and misconduct against Iithete, made recommendations to the company’s board, initiated disciplinary charges, testified during Iithete’s disciplinary hearing and actively participated in board meetings during which Iithete’s fate was decided after he had been found guilty on seven disciplinary charges.
Du Toit’s involvement in multiple roles during the investigation and disciplinary process was “irregular and unprocedural to say the least”, Mazambo concluded.
He also said Du Toit “clearly had an axe to grind against [Iithete]”, to such an extent that he was unable to detect the “glaring bias” caused by the multiple roles he played during the investigation and disciplinary process.
The chairperson of the disciplinary hearing relied on a human resources policy of Ongwediva Medipark dating from 2019, but that policy had not been approved by the company’s board, and a human resources policy dating from 2006 should have been used instead, Mazambo found as well.
A board meeting at the end of September 2022, during which it was decided to endorse a previous decision to dismiss Iithete, was attended by only three of the company’s six directors, with those three directors supporting the dismissal.
However, according to the company’s articles of association, a valid board resolution has to be signed by all directors, Mazambo noted.
The disciplinary procedure adopted by Ongwediva Medipark which led to Iithete’s dismissal was “replete with irregularities”, Mazambo concluded.
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