Swartbooi wants petroleum products upstream unit converted into monitoring and evaluation unit

Landless People’s Movement leader Bernadus Swartbooi has proposed that instead of putting the petroleum products upstream unit under the president’s office it should be transformed into a monitoring and evaluation component.

Swartbooi said this in the National Assembly on Tuesday, during a discussion on the petroleum bill, which seeks to transfer administration of the petroleum sector into the Office of the President.

Swartbooi said he understands president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s decision following scandals around the National Petroleum Corporation of Namibia (Namcor) and the Ministry of Industries, Mines and Energy due to corruption, power and problems of resource grabbing.

“It may be the issue of lack of trust in the ministry. But sectors are run by departments. At best, the way we see this is perhaps the president will need to convert this unit into a monitoring and evaluation unit with a petroleum council placed at the ministry that will be partly monitored by the unit in the Presidency office,” he proposed.

Another issue he pointed out is that once an investment decision is made and State House is not in agreement with it, the president cannot review her own decision and the matter would then have to go to court, because the president was involved in the initial decision by virtue of the construction of the tabled amendment bill.

“In other words you are giving her powers and giving it to the court. If the minister was taking this decision, his decisions can be reported to the prime minister, then the president, and the process allows for reviews and change without having to go to court and allows efficiency in a sector that is very capital intensive,” Swartbooi explained.

He said the difficult problem he has is the consistent recentralisation of powers, which he said undermines democracy and the consensus of the Constitution.

Swartbooi said the bill has accountability loopholes, and cautioned that obscurity creates suspicion.

This, he said, becomes a system problem, when one has at best a unit running an economy of close to N$40 billion a year.

The system of the mines and energy ministry was built over 30 years and although there are bad apples, Swartbooi said he believes there are people with vast capacity to run the petroleum sector.

“The petroleum bill speaks only about two or three people, many people left out. We cannot support it, but we understand where the president is doing it, but let’s engage,” he said.

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