ACC outgrows baby shoes

THE Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is to move for a second time in six months – its rented premises have become too small to accommodate its growing number of staff members, says ACC director Paulus Noa.

The ACC is to relocate by March back to the Frans Indongo Gardens in central Windhoek, where it previously shared the fifth-floor offices of the Central Governance Agency. The ACC will now occupy the 12th and 13th floors of the building.Noa said the move was necessary because the ACC had outgrown its offices at 5 Johan Albrecht Street, mere months after moving in there by the middle of last year.Bureaucratic delays – as well as delays in setting up administrative and IT systems – saw 10 policemen initially seconded to the ACC to assist them in their investigations.But with the first four entry-level investigators now about to be appointed, there was no office space available for any new staff, Noa told The Namibian on Friday.He was adamant, however, that the move would not affect the commissions’ effectiveness, which has increasingly come under fire from supporters and critics alike for its apparent lack of action on high-profile cases.The move would not cause any major disruption to the ACC’s activities, which so far have suffered because of various technical delays in setting up its operations.”[The move] …will only take a day or so, then we are in.Work will not be affected,” Noa insisted.The fact that the ACC’s telephone number is not listed in the official phone directory would also be addressed as a matter of urgency, he said.Noa said the ACC was not in its own premises yet and did not have any telephone numbers of its own when the directory listings were compiled.Further, the ACC would soon launch a public awareness campaign and make its offices more accessible to the public.A toll-free number for complaints would also be advertised widely, he said.”We advertised our telephone numbers and so on […] on NBC TV for a while last year but we only had limited funds available for that,” he said.CASE LOADS, LIQUID FUEL Noa says that last year more than 600 cases were reported to him and his deputy, Erna van der Merwe, by members of the public, and they were making good progress with all of them.These included some cases of alleged high-level malfeasance such the controversial Namibia Liquid Fuel contract awarded to a small coterie of officials employed at State House and the office of the Attorney General.While the six months they have been operational were not enough to bring some of the more high-level cases to a conclusion, Noa said they have started calling in some of the people involved in Namibia Liquid Fuel for interviews.”We are making progress,” he said.Noa denied that this case had stalled as a result of nearly all potential witnesses – the officials who oversaw the N$400 million-a-year deal – being material beneficiaries of the same deal that sees NLF import 50 per cent of Namibia’s annual liquid fuel requirements.While Section 21 of the Anti-Corruption Act (act 8 of 2003) stipulated that any case reported must be investigated within a reasonable period of time, Noa agreed that a lack of experienced investigators still held back many investigations.Once the ACC had a full complement of investigators on board, “a reasonable period of time” for an investigation to be completed should not be more than three months, Noa said.* John Grobler is a freelance journalist; 081 240 1587The ACC will now occupy the 12th and 13th floors of the building.Noa said the move was necessary because the ACC had outgrown its offices at 5 Johan Albrecht Street, mere months after moving in there by the middle of last year.Bureaucratic delays – as well as delays in setting up administrative and IT systems – saw 10 policemen initially seconded to the ACC to assist them in their investigations.But with the first four entry-level investigators now about to be appointed, there was no office space available for any new staff, Noa told The Namibian on Friday.He was adamant, however, that the move would not affect the commissions’ effectiveness, which has increasingly come under fire from supporters and critics alike for its apparent lack of action on high-profile cases.The move would not cause any major disruption to the ACC’s activities, which so far have suffered because of various technical delays in setting up its operations.”[The move] …will only take a day or so, then we are in.Work will not be affected,” Noa insisted.The fact that the ACC’s telephone number is not listed in the official phone directory would also be addressed as a matter of urgency, he said.Noa said the ACC was not in its own premises yet and did not have any telephone numbers of its own when the directory listings were compiled.Further, the ACC would soon launch a public awareness campaign and make its offices more accessible to the public.A toll-free number for complaints would also be advertised widely, he said.”We advertised our telephone numbers and so on […] on NBC TV for a while last year but we only had limited funds available for that,” he said. CASE LOADS, LIQUID FUEL Noa says that last year more than 600 cases were reported to him and his deputy, Erna van der Merwe, by members of the public, and they were making good progress with all of them.These included some cases of alleged high-level malfeasance such the controversial Namibia Liquid Fuel contract awarded to a small coterie of officials employed at State House and the office of the Attorney General.While the six months they have been operational were not enough to bring some of the more high-level cases to a conclusion, Noa said they have started calling in some of the people involved in Namibia Liquid Fuel for interviews.”We are making progress,” he said.Noa denied that this case had stalled as a result of nearly all potential witnesses – the officials who oversaw the N$400 million-a-year deal – being material beneficiaries of the same deal that sees NLF import 50 per cent of Namibia’s annual liquid fuel requirements.While Section 21 of the Anti-Corruption Act (act 8 of 2003) stipulated that any case reported must be investigated within a reasonable period of time, Noa agreed that a lack of experienced investigators still held back many investigations.Once the ACC had a full complement of investigators on board, “a reasonable period of time” for an investigation to be completed should not be more than three months, Noa said.* John Grobler is a freelance journalist; 081 240 1587