SONJA SMITHTHE reinstated Namibia Airports Company commercial services manager Toska Sem is once again fighting for her job after she was found guilty on four charges.
A commission of inquiry chaired by lawyer Norman Tjombe found Sem guilty of dishonesty, leaking confidential information and failing to discharge her functions.
Sem, Josephine Soroses (human resources manager), Verengai Ruswa (finance and administration manager) and Albert Sibiya (manager for resourcing and relations) were suspended in October 2017.
Sem, Ruswa and Soroses were charged over a consultancy services tender to develop a five-year strategic plan, while Sibiya faced different charges. Ruswa and Soroses were cleared of all charges, while Sibiya resigned.
Deloitte & Touche carried out a forensic audit on the conduct of the four executives.
A 12-page judgement dated 27 February 2019 delivered by Tjombe, said Sem communicated with Corlen Masunda, who owns Excel Consult, one of the companies that tendered for the N$2 million job to draft NAC’s five-year strategic plan.
The inquiry relied mostly on information extracted by Deloitte & Touche from Sem’s mobile phone and email in which she communicated with Masunda over the tender.
Leon Knoetze from Deloitte & Touche told the inquiry that they had established that Masunda and or his company had dealt with NAC before. Masunda told Knoetze that he had shared an office with Sem at NAC.
The report also said that Sem recommended that Excel Consult and Lufthansa Consulting should be awarded another consultancy job but the tender and technical committee refused.
Instead, the tender and technical committee in February 2017 recommended to the then chief executive officer Tamer el-Kallawi that Bigenkuumba Infrastructure Pty Ltd should be awarded the tenders.
According to the report, Sem approached El-Kallawi in March asking him to direct the tender and technical committee to request compliance documents from all the bidding companies.
El-Kallawi, the findings said, endorsed Sem’s request but the tender and technical committee stood by its decision and recommended that the issue should be elevated to the tender and technical committee.
The tender was never awarded because El-Kallawi did not approach the board tender and technical committee with his submissions.
In his ruling, Tjombe agreed with Knoetze that there as a “strong will by Ms Toska Sem to promote Excel Consult of Mr Corlen Masunda as the preferred bidder”.
Sem’s lawyers, Metcalfe Attorneys, wrote to acting chief executive officer Lot Haifidi on 27 February requesting for another disciplinary hearing after accusing Tjombe of bias.
Metcalfe also charged that Tjombe refused to postpone the matter on 18 February to allow Sem access to her lawyer and that no Notice of Set Down was sent to her legal representative.
Sem, the lawyers said, requested Tjombe to recuse himself but he “refused to consider and/or give a ruling on Mrs Sem’s application for recusal”.
“As a result, Mrs Sem refused to participate in a kangaroo disciplinary hearing where the basic principle of administrative justice was simply ignored,” Metcalfe said.
The lawyers also said El-Kallawi brought in Masunda to the NAC and that he even attended board meetings as an executive and had full use of Sem’s IT system.
Tjombe, the lawyers further claimed, was “inexplicably absent for three scheduled disciplinary hearing dates on the ground of ill health” and Sisa Namandje, NAC’s initiator was absent on one occasion.
Metcalfe accused the airports’ company of illegal procurement of Deloitte & Touche’s services and for spending more than N$1,5 million on the forensic audit.
“Up to 30 November 2018, this sorry saga of abuse of our client and three other employees had cost Namibia Airports Company a staggering N$7 million,” Metcalfe claimed in his letter dated 27 February.
Haifidi told Metcalfe in a letter dated 27 February that NAC can neither interfere with the disciplinary hearing, nor set aside the ruling.
Tjombe said last week it would be inappropriate for him to comment on an internal disciplinary inquiry publicly.
“You should contact the initiator of the hearing, Mr Ntinda at Sisa Namandje and Company and/or the management of the Namibia Airports Company,” Tjombe said.
Namandje last week said he saw Metcalfe’s letter and read two paragraphs before realising that it is devoid of any sense.
Sem said she would not comment on any matter related to NAC.
“All matters at NAC are subject to strict confidentiality. Since I am an employee of NAC and for such reason, I may not comment.
“Please advise who provided such information to you. If this was from NAC, I would obtain a board authorisation to comment through my lawyer, advocate Metcalfe publicly,” Sem said.
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