S&Ts, Perks Are Legalised Theft

In 2021, Namibia’s investment promotion agency sent two executives to Dubai, who ended up attending a meeting virtually from their hotel rooms because they were not accredited to attend in person.

Speaking to Namibian Sun at the time, Namibia Investment Promotion and Development Board (NIPDB) chief executive Nangula Uaandja defended the week-long trip as necessary to get other work done towards an investment conference that eventually cost the country N$20 million.

This week, The Namibian reported that the NIPDB spent N$2.1 million on subsistence and travel allowances (S&T) for its officials in 2024, again highlighting a penchant for jet-setting that does not correlate with performance achievements.

The board had undertaken more than 80 foreign trips in 18 months by 2024.

The report at the NIPDB, where sources say Uaandja pocketed about half of the N$2.1 million, again highlights what by now is obvious to all and sundry – S&Ts in government and governmental agencies have become the legalised theft of public money.

The NIPDB waxed lyrical about facilitating an “investment pipeline” of N$175 billion in 2024, and said the total value of the projects “stood at N$2.9 billion while a further N$24 billion worth of projects was recorded in deployed capital”.

There’s no independent monitoring and evaluation of NIPDB’s work for anyone to know how much it directly or indirectly contributed to investment in the country.

It appears they claim success for the oil exploration and drilling, as well as the green hydrogen buzz.

The NIPDB depends entirely on taxpayers, receiving N$140 million in 2024, N$127 million in 2023, and N$105 million the previous year.

Some of their foreign adventures to woo investors have been described as flops, such as an expo in Brazil at which the Namibian group did not have interpreters despite executives travelling from Namibia only to return without engaging the potential investors.

The NIPDB story follows reports last week about government officials plans to increase S&Ts for bureaucrats by as much as threefold.

We cannot help recall Fishrot accused minister Bernhard Esau boasting that ministers would collect more than US$500 (approximaately N$9 065) a day in travel allowances.

“My Lord, travelling was very lucrative for us as ministers. That’s where we made money. And we saved money from there . . . I had a formula for travelling [to make money]. I travelled a lot. I had a budget of N$1.5 million per annum,” he said.

Though he was trying to save his skin from the Fishrot corruption charges, Esau was only confirming publicly what is an open secret: S&Ts in the government are abused for self-enrichment.

S&Ts and other perks for politicians and bureaucrats largely come from tax coffers.

This theft hits citizens like double and triple whammies.

High rates of S&Ts, which in many cases require no receipts, incentivise long-distance and weeks-long workshops that add little value to the job.

Senior managers often hoard the travelling instead of sending their troops who ordinarily would execute the work, such as expos in the case of the NIPDB.

The travelling is then undertaken at the expense of work that should have been attended to at the workstation.

New lawmakers should take drastic action urgently to improve Namibia’s productivity by cutting self-enrichment.