Africa-Press – Lesotho. THE chief executive of the Water and Sewerage Company (WASCO), Futho Hoohlo, has been fired. Hoohlo, who was appointed in August 2019, received his dismissal letter from the board on Tuesday.
Although thepost has not seen the letter, sources say he was fired for allegedly instigating Wasco employees to strike. A highly placed source said the board also cited irreparable differences with Hoohlo for the decision.
The letter was written by Wasco’s board Acting chairman Adv Monaheng Rasekoai. Apart from his sour relations with the board, Hoohlo was also at odds with the Ministry of Water Affairs.
In November last year, the ministry asked the board to censure Hoohlo for alleged intransigence and hostility to its authority. Hoohlo confirmed to thepost that he received the dismissal letter but refused to discuss further details.
He also said he was not at liberty to discuss his next course of action. Wasco has also issued a statement confirming Hoohlo’s exit. The dismissal is a culmination of what has been a toxic battle between Hoohlo and the board over the past eleven months.
The board first suspended Hoohlo in November last year for allegedly violating company policy and neglecting his duties by spending too much time attending board meetings of other institutions.
The board also said his arbitrary suspension of water meter connections had cost Wasco substantial revenue. Hoohlo, a former vice president of the Senate who has a reputation for being outspoken, denied the allegations and sued the board to reinstate him.
In January, before the Labour Court made a ruling on his challenge to the suspension, the board offered Hoohlo an exit package which he rejected. The board had offered to terminate his contract after paying him all benefits and a year’s salary.
Hoohlo responded that he was amenable to an amicable separation but wanted 18-months’ salary, arguing that this was what remained of his three-year contract.
When the negotiations broke down, Hoohlo pushed on with his labour case. In March this year, the Labour Court ordered the board to reinstate him because it had not given him a hearing before the suspension.
The board however stuck to its guns and refused to reinstate him. Hoohlo then filed a contempt of court charge against the board for refusing to reinstate him as the court had ordered.
But in April the board suspended him again on the same charges. Never one to shy away from a fight, Hoohlo is likely to challenge his dismissal. He is not new to such battles.
Last year Hoohlo was a central figure in the ruckus over the appointment of the administrator of the government’s Public Officers Defined Contribution Pension Fund (PODCPF) where he is a member of the Board of Trustees.
He was one of four trustees who vehemently opposed NBC Lesotho’s reappointment as the administrator of the M6 billion fund ahead of Akani Retirement Fund Administrators. Hoohlo and the other three trustees were rooting for Akani but lost when the matter was put to a vote.
Despite losing the consensus vote Hoohlo fought hard to block NBC’s appointment on allegations that the company had underperformed in its previous tenure and has a checkered history in managing South Africa’s Chemical Industries National Provident Fund (CINPF).
He wrote letters to Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro, who was finance minister at that time, asking him to intervene to reverse NBC’s appointment. He accused the board, of which he was a member, of ignoring complaints against NBC in Lesotho and South Africa.
At that time, NBC and Akani were locked in court battles over the contract to manage the CINPF. Akani had replaced NBC’s as the CINPF’s administrator under controversial circumstances that included accusations and counter-accusations of corruption, bribery and insider trading.
In Lesotho, Hoohlo filed an affidavit supporting a group of pensioners who sued to block NBC’s appointment of PODCPF’s administrators. This was despite the fact that the pensioners were not members of the PODCPF and therefore had no stake in who was appointed the administrator.
By supporting the pensioners’ case, Hoohlo was helping efforts to undo a decision made by his own board. In other words, he was fighting the same institution of which he was a board member.
In South Africa, Akani managed to wrestle the CINPF contract from NBC after a court victory but things quickly unravelled. Barely a year after taking over, Akani has found itself in serious trouble.
In August, the CINPF terminated Akani’s contract for alleged incompetence and “inefficiencies”. The CINPF accused Akani of delaying or failing to pay benefits to members and “poor reporting of the fund’s members”. It also said Akani was failing to distribute members’ benefits statements while those distributed had the wrong information.
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