Staff Reporter
WINDHOEK – Minister of Works and Transport John Mutorwa has appointed a temporary board of directors for the troubled state-owned civil engineering Roads Contractor Company (RCC).
The five-member board, which will provisionally serve for six months, was appointed in line with the provisions of the State-Owned Enterprises Governance Act.
The temporary board members are Orben Sibeya (chairperson), Dr Petrina Johannes (deputy chairperson), and Werner Schuckmann, Delia Kalangula and Justice Hausiku as ordinary board members.
Mutorwa announced the temporary board in a statement issued over the weekend. In the same statement, the works minister said the RCC’s chief executive officer Seth Herunga, as well as the company’s top management, have been informed to provide all the required administrative and technical information to the incoming board.
At the beginning of June, Cabinet directed Mutorwa to dismiss the RCC’s board of directors over an unauthorised N$2 billion deal with a Chinese firm. RCC, currently under a court-supervised rescue arrangement, in April signed an agreement with Chinese company Nantong Sanjian, which would have availed a N$580 million loan to the struggling state-owned entity in return for a stake in RCC’s projects. Reports suggested the Chinese firm’s stake would amount to over N$2 billion.
At the centre of the issue was how RCC, a wholly-owned state entity, entered into the self-funding agreement with Nantong Sanjian without approval from Mutorwa and the Attorney-General – and without authorisation from the Ministry of Finance.