Unam closes ranks around vice-chancellor

A PROBE into alleged mismanagement at the Sam Nujoma Marine and Coastal Resources Research Centre was instituted by University of Namibia management after a tip-off by a whistle-blower.

However, Unam’s pro-vice chancellor: academic affairs and research, Professor Osmund Mwandemele, was not at the centre of this investigation.This is how Mwandemele’s colleague, Dr Boniface Mutumba, put out fires about a recent report in a tabloid that Mwandemele allegedly siphoned millions out of the centre at Henties Bay.Mwandemele was the director of the centre from May 2003 to December 2006.Following an allegation that illegal ‘loans’ were being granted at the centre, an audit was commissioned, Mutumba said. Mwandemele was never implicated, he said.According to Mutumba, an additional bank account was opened apart from the university’s main bank account to ‘facilitate the ease of access to funds needed for research activities of the centre given its location away from the main campus’.Mutumba said Mwandemele was one of the three signatories to the bank account and that all Government subsidies for the centre and donor funds were first deposited into the university’s main account.A maximum of N$30 000 at a time was then made available to the centre when needed, Mutumba said. ‘One wonders in what way could such meagre funds given to the centre earn millions of Namibia dollar in interest to be siphoned off by Professor Mwandemele? There is nothing controversial about the opening of the account at Henties Bay, because it was necessary. Similarly, both Neudamm and Ogongo campuses are operating bank accounts, because of the farm operations they are undertaking on a daily basis.’According to him, ‘additional funds were only released by the finance department to the centre upon receipt of satisfactory accounts on all funds received by the centre’.Mutumba charged that the Informanté story was ‘simply malicious and the authors as well as their sources of information lack credibility and are devoid of professional ethics. It would appear that the so-called sources of information of the article are disgruntled elements.’