ACC probe of Haimbili to go ahead

THE Anti-Corruption Commission says its probe on the operations of suspended Trans-Namib Chief Executive Officer Titus Haimbili will not stop because he has returned to work.

ACC Director Paulus Noa told The Namibian yesterday that their investigation was ‘a criminal one of corruption’ and would thus not be influenced by Transport Minister Helmut Angula’s announcement that Haimbili and the TransNamib Board had reached an agreement for his return to office.’Those are administrative matters and have nothing to do with our criminal investigation of corruption. We don’t get influenced by administrative decisions because our investigation is independent,’ Noa said.He said their investigation was ‘nearly concluded’ as they were in the process of obtaining statements from the different people involved.Noa announced last month that they had opened a file to investigate Haimbili’s appointment of Albertus !Naruseb as General Manager of Human Resources.The Board alleged earlier that Haimbili had appointed him because he was his brother-in-law and that !Naruseb had leapfrogged other interviewees for the job.Haimbili denied the allegation and the recent disciplinary hearing by Clement Daniels found him not guilty on that charge.!Naruseb was part of a group of five new key staff members that Haimbili had appointed.Others were the General Manager for Finance, the Company Legal Advisor, the General Manager for Marketing and the Chief of Corporate Communication.On Monday, Transport Minister Angula announced that the Board and Haimbili had decided to ‘bury the hatchet’ and expressed his wish that all would regard the matter as a closed chapter.However, the Swapo Party Youth League has called for the appointment of a commission of inquiry to ‘unravel all mysteries as to why exactly the Board and the line Ministry did not want Haimbili at Trans-Namib’.’We welcome the reinstatement of Haimbili as that is what we have consistently demanded for the past 11 months. We have been called all sorts of names for doing so but the workers and SPYL are vindicated,’ said SPYL secretary Elijah Ngurare.He claimed the ‘real saboteurs’ at TransNamib were the Board and the Ministry of Works and Transport.’They should be held to account as they were pursuing a political agenda. There can be no business as usual until those pertinent issues and questions are addressed satisfactorily,’ Ngurare said.He said Cabinet also needed to review its own ’embarrassing’ conduct, including how it appointed the Board.Haimbili’s suspension last year led to a national strike by TransNamib workers and financial losses ran into millions.Shortly after the six-day illegal strike Angula told the National Assembly that the stay-away had cost the transport parastatal N$52,9 million. He said the loss for the Namibian economy was estimated at N$180 million.In October, Cabinet was forced to provide a bailout of N$14,2 million to TransNamib as the company was unable to pay workers’ salaries.TransNamib had asked for a bailout of N$52 million but only N$14,2 million was advanced from the Government’s contingency fund. christof@namibian.com.na