THREE days after leaving office as the Namibia Airports Company’s acting chief executive, Josephine Soroses had to explain to the board why she signed off five questionable tenders.
Soreses, who acted as CEO for two months, was appointed when the NAC suspended Tamer El-Kallawi pending a corruption probe.
understands that the board asked Lot Haifidi, who succeeded Soroses, to ask her to explain how she had signed off the tenders.
Soroses returned to her position in the NAC’s human resources department.
The five contracts – valued at a combined N$1,1 million – included hiring an economist to inform staff members about the state of economy; training the human resources team; a supervisory skills training course; Microsoft Excel training; and a training session on how to chair disciplinary hearings.
Documents seen by show that Soroses signed the five contracts between 11 August 2017 and 18 August 2017.
She signed off a N$180 000 contract for Twilight Capital Consulting owned by economist Mally Likukela, who was supposed to inform staff about the state of the Namibian economy.
Soroses sent an approval letter for the economic consulting services to Likukela’s company on 18 August, the same day Twilight and another consultant applied for the tender.
The former acting chief executive, however, only approved Likukela’s proposal on 21 August.
Likukela charged the NAC N$12 000 per day for five days for his presentation, which would include research, review and analysis.
Twilight asked N$30 000 to prepare the presentation, and a whopping N$96 600 for daily out-of-office allowances.
Likukela declined to comment when contacted on Tuesday.
The contract for the supervisory skills training was awarded to the Institution of Training and Consultancy Services for N$398 000.
Soroses also signed a N$254 000 contract on 14 August for LM Business Solutions to train staff in initiating and chairing disciplinary hearings.
The training was scheduled for 4 to 6 September this year.
She also approved a N$287 000 contract for a four-day industrial relations training course for the company’s human resources team.
The contract was awarded to RMZ Consulting CC on 14 August, the same day that the N$254 000 contract was concluded.
In her explanation to the board on 4 September, Soroses said the rationale for using an independent economist to inform NAC staff members on the country’s economic climate is because a survey they carried out indicated that staff members do not trust their management.
She added that it was also “ultimately to avoid a situation where employees perceive the briefing session as the platform where the NAC management provides loads of excuses.”
Referring to the ongoing salary negotiations with the Namibia Public Workers Union since July, Soroses said in her report that sourcing the economist was regarded as a “proactive intervention to create a better understanding in the instance that wage and substantive agreement negotiations for the 2017/2018 financial year reached a deadlock.”
A submission by the human resources department and approved by Soroses dated 11 August 2017 said: “This is a proactive initiative of the organisation to let the employees know and take informed future decisions considering the economic situation”.
Soroses said the training was in line with the training and development functions guided by the company’s training and development policy which was approved in September 2011.
She added that the services were sourced following the approval of the company’s training calendar for the current financial year.
Procurement manager Boas Naanda, in an email, said the process to source quotations for the contracts was not transparent, and was not covered by the new Procurement Act.
Naanda also questioned the hiring of an economist at N$12 000 a day, saying it was unnecessary expenditure as the exercise could have been done by the parastatal’s strategic executives at no extra cost.
“My question is: why can’t we use our strategic executives to address the employees?” he asked.
Naanda was responding to finance strategic executive Verengai Ruswa, who wrote him an email on 23 August about the five contracts.
Ruswa said the priority in awarding tenders should be transparent.
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