2017-09-04Staff Report 2 John Muyamba Rundu-Linus Neumbo, the private investigator currently probing malpractices, corruption and kickbacks around some tenders awarded by the Rundu Town Council, has revealed there are more than 20 such cases in which the evidence is so damning they will be referred to court. In May, Neumbo was appointed through his firm, Neumbo Private Investigators Agency along with Kadhila Amoomo Legal Practitioner to carry out investigations of incidents of alleged corrupt practices in the town council, said to involve senior officials, among them a suspended executive. Neumbo said: “There are more than 20 cases and they will be sent to court once the dockets have been completed – some of these cases are the Website tender, the bulk SMS tender which was allegedly never seen or used after council paid a lot of money for it, and a de-bushing tender, which was also allegedly given to a certain contractor to de-bush a piece of land and fence it off, but this also never saw the light after money was paid long ago.” Neumbo further said two of the cases they are investigating are a tender of sourcing aircons for more than N$50,000 which was awarded without going through the local tender board, and a refuse removal tender, of which investigations show it was given to family members. “We are talking about the whole spectrum of corruption – tenders that are being given to boyfriends. Now that is the story why they are crying and accusing the councillors of many things. These councillors are the facilitators in terms of the act – they are not the administrators and there is no way if the council has passed a resolution and tells you what to do it is then for you to go and implement that now. Then you will see that even when it comes to the local tender board only certain players do things through established loopholes. If you look at it you will see that there are a lot of illegal activities there,” Neumbo said. According to Neumbo when he started the investigation he started with the Maria Mwengere Road that links Rundu Vocational Training Centre and Unam Campus road which is being upgraded from gravel to a tarred road, which has been standing incomplete for a long time. “I brought a technical guy, a quantity surveyor and we came up with the issue of penalties and cancelled the contract – I’m telling you within that week their machines were seen running up and down and the road is now almost finished. Now why is this so?” queried the private investigator. “In my opinion, you drain that tender till there is no more funds and then they kick off the contractor and appoint another contractor to come and finish the job, and that leads to escalation of cost. Take the fire house for instance which was budgeted for N$2.8 million, which later escalated to N$4.5 million and eventually to N$8.3 million – RTC senior officials are the role players,” he stated. “We have discussed it with management and we are going to bring in a structural engineer to come and give us, from the building’s foundation, a breakdown of costs. We want explanations from these guys – we are serious with the issues that are costing the council. I have also learned that there were computers in the new building which have been stolen, but there is no sign of forced entry into the building and we are also investigating that,” Neumbo further revealed. The fire house building has been handed over to the council but it was not in use until now. 2017-09-04Staff Report 2
