Africa-Press – Namibia. NAMPORT has appointed O’Brien Hekandjo as its new executive responsible for port operations – despite Hekandjo facing disciplinary action at the City of Windhoek.
Hekandjo is set to start his new role at the ports authority next month, while his misconduct case has yet to be finalised. This is, however, not the first time Hekandjo leaves a public entity amid controversy.
Before joining the City of Windhoek, he was suspended from the position of chief technical services officer at the Namibia Power Corporation (NamPower).
Hekandjo’s case presents the Ministry of Public Enterprises with the challenge of determining whether it is appropriate to appoint an executive facing disciplinary action elsewhere to a parastatal.
It appears state-owned governance policy guidelines are not clear on the matter. Minister of public enterprises Leon Jooste says his ministry will have to look into the situation despite having no jurisdiction over the appointment of executives.
“We have chief executive officer recruitment guidelines, but it’s not proper for the shareholder to get involved in the recruitment of executives. Having said this, if the information is indeed correct, I will definitely inform the board and request that they look into the matter and explain to me. I’ve already instructed my executive director to look into this,” Jooste says on Hekandjo’s appointment.
Hekandjo, who is currently employed as a strategic executive at the City of Windhoek’s electricity department, has been charged with allegedly disclosing confidential council information. He is further accused of abusing his position of trust at the city.
The charges emanate from an incident which took place in January 2018 during which Hekandjo allegedly disclosed the outcome of a recruitment process to one of the applicants vying for a city engineering job.
Hekandjo was chairing the said recruitment process. Despite the process the city had not sanctioned the appointment, resulting in complaints and legal threats by the said candidate against the city.
Hekandjo, when approached for comment, denied any wrongdoing and said the issue is confidential. He said he did, however, disclose his pending disciplinary case to Namport’s chief executive officer (CEO).
“I explained to him it’s not a fraud or corruption issue. It’s more of a procedural misunderstanding,” he said. Namport CEO Andrew Kanime last week said the company is presently dealing with the matter.
“ . . . it is by nature a confidential process . . . our way forward is guided by, among others, Namport’s recruitment and selection policy,” he said.
Hekandjo was also suspended in 2015 alongside NamPower’s managing director, Paulinus Shilamba, and senior manager for energy trading Werner Graupe for their alleged roles in a KPMG contract which ended up costing the power utility more than N$30 million in unapproved expenditure.
Apart from the removal of the three officials, NamPower also terminated its longstanding relationship with KPMG as its external auditors. “There was never really an issue. I went for a hearing and the charges were not corruption, they were more of gross negligence. That’s what they were calling it,” Hekandjo said.
