The Namibia Revenue Agency (NamRA) has refuted claims that it has proposed hefty employee salary packages to its board of directors.
This comes after a local daily reported that the newly launched NamRA has proposed high salaries for themselves and the organisation’s employees – including a maximum of N$2.7 million for its commissioner, Sam Shivute.
However, Shivute yesterday said the article is laden with factual inaccuracies, and might appear to be true and correct if left unchallenged. According to him, the NamRA management has made no submission to its board regarding salary packages, and no such submission or proposal is pending before the board, or being prepared for the consideration of the board.
“If the Namibian Sun newspaper persists that such submission exists, as it claims to have seen same, we encourage the newspaper to disclose the source or author of such submission and its date of preparation and/or submission to the board,” he stated.
The newspaper article claimed that executives at the agency will be among the top earners in the public enterprise space after the entity was categorised as a ‘tier three’ state-owned enterprise.
The report claimed that Shivute could earn up to N$225 000 a month, while executive members stand to benefit from a maximum monthly salary of about N$170 000, among others. In the article, Shivute is quoted as having said the proposed astronomical salaries at the new agency are commensurate with the task of collecting billions in state revenues.
However, in a statement, he slammed the non-existence of the reported salary adjustment proposal by the NamRA management.
“While we take no issue with the quotation attributed to NamRA Commissioner Sam Shivute to the effect that the salaries are commensurate with NamRA’s mandate of collecting taxes, the reference in Sam Shivute’s response was to the salaries being paid to the NamRA staff. However, the article seeks to portray Sam Shivute as defending the reported salary adjustment proposal. It is inconceivable how he could be justifying a proposal that does not exist,” reads a statement signed by Shivute.