Nepru in cash crunch

THE cash-strapped Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (Nepru) has been struggling to stay afloat, with funding becoming harder to come by, to the extent that June salaries are yet to be paid.

Besides losing core funding from the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), the research institution still has not got access to the N$17 million granted by the European Union in December last year.ACBF had been Nepru’s main source of funding since 1994, but pulled the plug on Nepru last year after the institution failed to submit financial reports for five years.ACBF also wanted a Namibian team running Nepru and a Namibian financial manager. Nepru phased out all non-African expatriates and also appointed a Namibian director last year.Nepru has been having difficulties paying salaries and keeping the organisation running. Despite getting a bank overdraft in December last year, the institution almost failed to pay its employees that month and in January this year. Nepru Director Fanuel Tjingaete said the situation with ACBF would be sorted out soon, as the institution had started submitting the outstanding audited financial reports. He said many of them had been completed already. He admitted that Nepru was experiencing a financial crisis. With regard to the EU funding, Tjingaete said the European Union just had some conditions and criteria it wanted Nepru to meet. He added that they were complying with the EU criteria and that the problems would be solved within a month’s time. Comment from the EU could not be obtained since Dr Elisabeth Pape, head of delegation in Namibia, was out of the country.Talk about Nepru going down has been making rounds in the civil society circles. A National Planning Commission source said Nepru at one point even proposed that it should get first refusal of all Government research projects. The idea is said to have been shot down. Since Nepru was a Swapo brainchild, many in Government believe that Government should bail out the battling research institution. Some even feel Nepru should become a parastatal.

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