Nalisa becomes NAC’s hot potato

NAMIBIA Airports Company (NAC) chief executive officer Ben Biwa (photo), in an attempt to save the company from more embarrassment, has opted to waste more money on newspaper advertisements denying that any irregularities were involved during the restructuring process managed by consultant Brain Nalisa.

In the process Biwa also contradicted himself with regard to the information he provided to an investigating team appointed by Works and Transport Minister Erkki Nghimtina which recommended that disciplinary action be taken against the CEO.On December 21 2011 Biwa, after being instructed by the chairperson of the Remuneration Committee and board member Frieda Aluteni, sent an email to Nalisa to engage him with the NAC’s restructuring process. ‘I would like you to give us a quote for the scope of work as presented to you by Ms Aluteni. I would also like you to prepare a consultancy agreement between you and us and to be submitted with the quote as soon as possible.’ Nalisa answered: ‘As requested I will forward to you the requested quotation and the contract by tomorrow.’This agreement was eventually signed by the CEO without any input of the NAC management and Nalisa was given three months to complete the task to the amount of N$1,17 million.However, Nalisa’s Total Insight Corporate Solutions could not finalise the tasks to be performed under the contract by the deadline of March 9 2012 and requested a month’s extension. The board agreed that the tasks should be completed by 1 April.At that stage NAC found it not fitting to seek another quotation and no new contract was entered into between the company and Nalisa for undertaking the extension of the first contract. Only on April 17 2012 did Nalisa submit another quotation to NAC without any terms of reference.This quotation was initially N$6,78 million but was reduced by Nalisa himself on the same day he submitted it to N$5,63 million.On April 17 2012 this quotation was submitted to the board and board members Dr John Steytler and Ms I Mainga objected to the payment of the N$5,63 million.Biwa himself confirmed that the quotation and payment were not approved by the board due to the sudden high cost.Therefore they decided to approach board members individually to obtain their approval and signatures.However, the submission was only signed by Biwa, Aluteni and the chairperson of the board, Ndeutala Katonyala, as well as Marthinus Boshoff, after he was apparently brought under the impression that all members had agreed to it. The CEO also went ahead and paid N$3,4 million in Nalisa’s bank account on April 23 2012 without board approval.On Monday April 30 Nalisa sent an email from America and attached the job descriptions for the HR officials and asked that they be reviewed and corrections be made to be sent back to him to finalise his task.The investigating team recommended that disciplinary action be taken against Biwa, Aluteni and Katonyala and that the three together with Boshoff be held accountable for the disbursement and the irregular payment of N$3,4 million of NAC funds until such time as a forensic investigation is concluded to exonerate them from such accountability.