WINDHOEK – A special City of Windhoek (CoW) meeting slated for yesterday to discuss President Hage Geingob’s directive that suspended City of Windhoek CEO Robert Kahimise and City Police Chief Abraham Kanime be reinstated has been postponed indefinitely.
CoW management committee chairperson Agatha Ashilelo told fellow councillors that the much-anticipated meeting has been called off.
“[Honourable councillors] are hereby notified that the special council which was scheduled for this evening (Wednesday) has been postponed,” she told them in WhatsApp message yesterday.
“This is due to the fact that last night’s (Tuesday) [management committee] meeting could not deliberate on the item/s which were supposed to be discussed at the special council meeting as no legal advisor was present. The meeting will be rescheduled in due course,” she advised.
Windhoek mayor Muesee Kazapua told New Era on Monday that the City council was to meet to, among others deliberate on how the President’s directive of last week should be implemented.
Geingob last week ordered council to reinstate both Kanime and Kahimise and drop all charges against them.
The directive has been met with mixed reactions, with critics pointing to a possible bad precedence being set if the two officials were reinstated into their jobs without disciplinary procedures being completed against them. The Namibian Public Workers Union (Napwu) on Tuesday threatened that if the City implements Geingob’s directive to lift the suspensions of Kahimise and Kanime, it (the union) will demand that all City employees currently on suspension be reinstated treated similarly.
However, the presidency has strongly defended the Geingob’s directive, saying it was within his ambits. Analysts have said the President’s arbitral power to lift suspensions in this manner is only limited to political appointees, which Kanime and Kahimise are not. Kanime has been on suspension since March 2017 on allegations of misusing public funds when he allegedly paid legal fees with City funds for a lawsuit against the municipality.
His boss, Kahimise, has been suspended back and forth due to allegations that he had received funding from the City of Windhoek for doctoral studies at institutions in Europe without proper approval from the council’s management committee for the said study loan.