New Board for NBC
By Asser Ntinda

Only two old Board members retained

In a dramatic move, government has appointed three new people to serve in the Board of Directors for the next five years and reappointed two from the outgoing Board.

These are Sven Thieme, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Ohlthaver and List Group of Companies. He will also serve as Chairperson of the Board.

Two more new faces on the Board are Kanime Andrew Kanime, General Manager of Human Resources and Strategic Training at Telecom Namibia and Diana Louisa van Schalwyk, Director of Corporate Affairs and Marketing at Hartlief.

Kanime once served as NBC Acting Director General when former Director General, Bob Kandetu, was fired early last year.

Only two people from the old Board were retained. These are Yvonne Boois, who is now Acting Director General, and Rev Ludwig Siyaka Hausiku. Boois is a Trust Manager at the Namibian Literacy Trust, while Hausiku is the Kavango Regional Secretary for the Council of Churches in Namibia.

Recently, Information and Communication Technology Minister, Joel Kaapanda, approached Cabinet to approve the appointment of the new Board for the NBC.

A media release from Cabinet Chambers on Thursday quoted Kaapanda as saying that he was hopeful that the new Board would be able to provide strategic direction at the NBC and also work out a turn-around strategy for the Corporation.

“The NBC needs to be run on business principles to generate adequate revenue to become financially self-sustaining,” said the media release.

Frieda Shimbuli, former Chairperson of the NBC Board, Gallen Colokwe, Engerbecht Nowatiseb, Mayor of Tsumeb and Eric Biwa, were not reappointed.

Shimbuli became Chairperson when the late Ponhele Ya France was fired as Board Chairperson a couple of years ago. The NBC has been without a director general since Kandetu’s departure last year, with a number of people acting only. He left behind a tale of financial scandals and mismanagement with debts spiraling out of control and spending that was not guided by prudence.

The outgoing Board was appointed in 2005, only to find that the NBC had an operational budgetary shortfall of N$44 million. That shortfall was inherited from the previous Board.

The current Board is taking over the NBC that is technically insolvent. The last Auditor General’s Report contained damning findings for the NBC’s financial position. It is in its worst financial crisis in years and, unless government pumps in millions of dollars, the NBC may just not be able to pay the salaries of its employees soon.

When Kandetu was fired last year, Matthew //Gowaseb was appointed Acting Director General.

When he took over, the NBC had 366 permanent employees whose salary bill stood at N$5 million per month.

Such overhead cost was the lowest in the history of NBC and was brought about by previous painful retrenchment and restructuring exercises, whose main aim was to cut cost. Such measures partially succeeded, until //Gowaseb got the job.

Now, the NBC is financially suffocating through careless spending and lack of financial discipline, with its salary bill now standing at over N$8 million per month, up from N$5 million per month. NBC staff complement has risen to nearly 500 permanent employees, up from 366.

A forensic audit report on NBC conducted by Grand Namibia in 2006, which is in possession of Namibia Today, revealed some damning findings on appointments, promotions and transfers.

Between 2001 – 2006, it only found three requests for advertisements out of 228. Of the 228 appointments tested over the same period, the audit found only 82 advertisements. Of the 228 appointments tested, only 107 job applications could be found.

Of the 228 appointments tested, only a short-list of potential employees for 51 interviews could be found. Of the 274 promotions tested, only 56 performance appraisals could be found. Grand Namibia was commissioned by the Auditor General’s Office.

The new Board comes into being when the NBC was headhunting for its Director General. Advertisements were run in several newspapers and the shortlist was put on hold until the new Board was appointed.None of the former Director Generals has ever completed his five-year contract with the NBC. It is one of the most unstable public companies in the country, with a perpetual crisis of leadership instability at the top. When Nahum Gorelick left in the mid 1990s, he was replaced by the late Dan Tjongarero. But his health compromised his term of office and died a few years after his appointment.

He was replaced by Dr Ben Mulongeni, but he too did not last long and was soon shown the door. He was later replaced by Gerry Munyama. Munyama was replaced by Kandetu.