Kuzeeko Tjitemisa
Windhoek-A decision on whether or not to shut down the Roads Contractor Company (RCC) remains in the hands of cabinet, Public Enterprises Minister Leon Jooste said this week.
Speaking to New Era, Jooste said Cabinet had asked his ministry to look at either the option of turning around the company or closing it down.
His ministry has since studied the matter and sent a report to Cabinet, which will then decide the company’s fate.
“I think in my honest opinion the RCC in its current form, and looking at its legacy up until now, has not done what it was designed to do,” Jooste said.
The RCC was designed to operate as road construction and maintenance entity for a defined period, after which it would dissolve and devolve those tasks to Namibian SMEs, which never happened.
“If you really analyse that and what the RCC has done during this period and the mandate that it should fall within the road construction maintenance sector, I am not sure that the RCC has done what it was supposed to do for the government,” he said.
“Now we have to again look at that sector, which is an important sector in the country, and decide whether government should be involved in that sector through an SOE.
“If the answer is yes, then the question is in what form and for what purpose,” he questioned.
Jooste added that the role of his ministry was not to target any specific SOE but to evaluate the significance of a particular company and whether it fit the Namibia of today.
He said most of the parastatals were created some years ago, with some even established at independence, so the ministry’s task was to evaluate their relevance in the Namibia of today.