Bob Kandetu to challenge axing

FIRED NBC Director General Bob Vezera Kandetu is taking legal action against the parastatal’s board for unprocedural dismissal.

Kandetu told a packed media briefing in Katutura yesterday that his lawyers, Dr Weder, Kauta and Hoveka, have started working on a case.’What I shall do is to confirm to you that I locate these actions in the victimisation of my person that has come a long way and has resurged at intervals. The only new thing is that the Board of Directors of the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation has now publicly played their part with an open hand,’ Kandetu told the gathering.Close to 100 people who showed solidarity with the fired NBC DG attended the briefing.Among them were representatives from different political parties and NBC employees but the majority were friends and close acquaintances.NBC television and radio where the notable absentees.Acting DG Theo Karipi instructed them not to cover the briefing.On Monday they were the only ones the board briefed when they announced they had fired Kandetu.Kandetu said he had been dismissed for alleged incompetence, lack of leadership, maladministration, mismanagement and numerous irregularities.’These charges led, not to a fair disciplinary hearing where they could be substantiated, but to a summary dismissal, implying that I am guilty as charged,’ he said.The board declared him incompetent 10 months after they passed a vote of confidence in his work.Kandetu said the board assessed him for the period September 2006 until March 2008 (20 months) and concluded that he was ‘competently managing the business of the corporation’.During that assessment they gave him a 65 per cent rating out of the 85 per cent rating recommended by the executive committee of the board only for them to, 10 months later, ‘wake up to the realisation that the NBC Director General was in fact incompetent all along’.What he did not mention was that the formation of the Rally for Democracy and Progress came after that assessment.Swapo alleges that Kandetu is supporter of RDP leader Hidipo Hamutenya and was using the NBC to sabotage their operations.When Hamutenya left Swapo to start the RDP, the ruling party started a purge of people who supported him while he was still with Swapo.Kandetu, by virtue of being Hamutenya’s campaign manager in the race for Swapo’s presidential candidacy in 2004, was seen as ‘an automatic’ and one of the prime targets to get rid of.Kandetu has always maintained that he supported Hamutenya in Swapo but was not a member of RDP.’PROUD’Yesterday he spoke of how proud he was about his ‘modest contributions’ to uplifting the NBC from the difficulties of the past.When he started at the NBC on May 29 2006, the parastatal had no strategic business plan, no budget, no money and no financial records.’This reality had impelled Cabinet to resolve not to fund NBC until I produced a strategic business plan. NBC now has a strategic business plan, financial records and an active budget. We have cleansed the financial systems, created accounting records and whereas we did not know the NBC debt book, now it is on the table and no longer hidden,’ he said.He said the payroll also had some ghost workers when he took office.Upon closer inspection he found that there were over 400 employees, 70 vacancies and 78 persons on contract, with over half of them appointed supernumerary.Kandetu said they were able to turn the situation around with 24 people put on fixed professional contracts while the human resource and the procurement and management systems were placed in the hands of capable general managers.’Contrary to then, NBC has a functioning board with active sub-committees such as board executive and board audit sub- committees which enable the board to take informed decisions … This situation was not the same before June 2006,’ he said.