If the PM Dares Fix the RCC…

It is true, as prime minister Elijah Ngurare has stated, that the government has a major problem of “middlemen” and state employees more interested in self-enrichment than improving the living conditions of the voting masses.

Ngurare has argued at a Cabinet retreat held in the capital last week that the public “procurement” system is fraught with bottlenecks and obstacles that serve a few.

The question then is: What is the first minister and his government going to do about the problems he outlined?

We urge Ngurare and the Cabinet to make sure they diagnose the problems correctly to pave the way for the fast “service delivery” they have promised.

In the same week that Ngurare was decrying the procurement system, self-enrichment and middlemen, a stark reminder of the malice that afflicts the government’s ‘service delivery’ was playing out at the state-owned Roads Contractor Company (RCC).

The RCC was set up as the successor to the government department that was getting the primary contracts to build and maintain.

Sadly, the RCC was stillborn. It has become a hotbed of mismanagement and corruption from the onset. Its managers, most of whom were apparent cronies of the political masters, soon used the company for self-enrichment, hiring friends and proxies.

Ngurare is spot on in his conclusion that the public service (including state-owned enterprises) has been hijacked by employees “using the government as a side hustle”.

In fact, for several the government jobs guarantee day-to-day income,while their main occupation is public tenders.

The RCC has, for decades, been used as a stepping stone by managers hijacking road contracts from the parastatal, turning themselves into multi-millionaires.

The RCC to date remains perennially dependent on taxpayer bailouts (N$60 million in the current financial year) – money that merely covers the salaries of highly paid managers and employees whose main task is to show they are still alive and thus get the pay cheque.

If Ngurare wants to tackle “middlemen”, he has to look no further than the RCC. It is a classic example. The parastatal gets government road construction tenders, then ‘outsources’ them to other entities.

In March, The Namibian reported that RCC acting chief executive Dasius Nelumbu hand-picked the Ondonga and Oukwanyama traditional authorities for road maintenance works amounting to N$6 million.

The two tribal institutions then outsourced the RCC’s ‘outsourced’ tender to two private companies – Joto Investment (owned by Jonathan Amupolo) and Kongom Group (Pty) Ltd, represented by Kongo Mokaxwa.

The companies stated that the tribal authorities hired them because private businesses had the equipment.

The prime minister should question why the RCC should continue to act as a ‘middleman’ that hires other ‘middlemen’ (tribal chiefs in this case), who eventually give the jobs to other hand-picked people.

The RCC confirmed last week that a company owned by one of its directors was hired to supervise road construction work the government gave to the RCC.

That such a blatant conflict of interest was allowed for Trinitas Consulting Engineers, owned by RCC director Rhys Mbala, points to deeper problems than mere bottlenecks in the procurement system.

The ‘bottlenecks’ can be cleared. What happens to the quality of service delivery amid mismanagement and corruption?

It is crucial that Ngurare and team take a broader approach, addressing the deeper issues underlying poor services.

There are many types of institutions like the RCC that have been allowed to commit mismanagement and corruption with impunity and with zero accountability within their internal governance processes.

Without ensuring accountability and consequences for mismanagement, politicians can forget about the speedy and quality services they keep promising voters.

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