THE Engineering Council of Namibia (ECN) has been plagued by a long list of governance failures, financial irregularities, and alleged misconduct since the current board’s appointment in 2022.
ECN registrar Charles Mukwaso said this at a media briefing in Windhoek yesterday.
The former ECN board, headed by Sophie Tekie, was officially dissolved on 26 June by minister of works and transport Veikko Nekundi.
Mukwaso yesterday claimed the sacked council members had been given 14 days to justify their positions, but have failed to do so.
“The dissolved board/council had not held a single meeting since 26 July 2024 (close to 12 months ago), despite very important business that needed their attention,” he said.
He said some of the council members had pleaded with the council to convene meetings.
Mukwaso claimed Tekie cancelled or postponed any meeting plans, vigorously sowed disunity and confusion, and issued threats to the extent that planned meetings never materialised.
“Some of those cancellations or postponements came in the form of threats to other council members or people who called for such meetings. Annual meeting calendars were not followed, and confusion was the order of the day,” he said.
Mukwaso said Tekie started declining meetings after his reinstatement on 26 July 2024, following a lengthy suspension.
She allegedly said the council’s members were not gazetted.
“Before 26 July 2024, none of these two factors were an issue, and meetings were held whenever she permitted it,” he said.
According to Mukwaso, the ECN, under the now dissolved council, spent over N$800 000 in legal fees fighting a case against him, which they ultimately lost.
He said an additional N$40 000 was allegedly used to fund the legal costs related to a private criminal case involving Tekie.
Mukwaso claimed these expenditures were made without the council’s approval and led to the near depletion of the ECN’s reserve fund, which stood at over N$2 million in 2022, but dropped to around N$700 000 by mid-2024.
He revealed that the ECN has not finalised audits beyond the 2021/22 financial year due to the council’s inaction, further stalling accountability.
“In May 2023, Tekie manufactured two fake letters using my electronically stored signature. These were the letters she used to call a secret meeting of the council on 31 May 2023,” he said.
Mukwaso also raised ethical concerns over the approval of an Iranian national’s registration, allegedly due to shared religious beliefs with Tekie.
Fake council minutes and the unauthorised appointment of committee members were also among the accusations. Mukwaso claimed that minutes were forged, backdated, and signed without council approval, including by staff members who were pressured to act outside their roles.
He further alleged that Tekie appointed her former colleagues from a pre-independence engineering association to ECN committees without proper resolutions.
Tekie yesterday said Nekundi should have fired Mukwaso as the council did nothing wrong.
She denied that the council spent N$40 000 on her legal costs.
According to Tekie, only N$1 500 was spent.
“Where they went to the police against me is not a Sophie Tekie, the president of the Engineering Council of Namibia, even if we paid for the lawyers, it is not an issue. It’s an institutional matter. The man twisted everything.
“He forged his certificate … because we were aware that there were a lot of complaints against him.
He needs to answer to the allegations contained in our letter to the minister.
The N$101 000 overtime, what is his answer on that? The irregularity of registration, what is his answer on that? He has forged a dead person’s signature (Jacky Mukuka),” Tekie said.
According to Tekie, Mukuka died on 5 May 2021.
“How can the PP on Mukwaso’s professional engineering certificate be in 2022? That signature of the president, we assume it to be fraud.
That president who signed there should have been me, because I was appointed in August 2022.
That certificated is allegedly fraudulent,” she said.
Tekie also accused Mukwaso of paying himself three times in December 2021.
She asked why Nekundi did not gazette the council so it could do its job and institute legal action against Mukwaso and report him at the Anti-Corruption Commission.
She said Mukwaso submitted practical works but no referee reports from 2019 to 2022.
“The referee report came later on. No practical work experience report was assessed and evaluated for signature by supervisor.
He did not have the capacity to supervise projects and therefore could not be granted a certificate as professional engineer. He is therefore guilty of the offence of fraud,” Tekie said.
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