Minister of Sport, Youth and National Service, Agnes Tjongarero on Tuesday invoked provision (7) (2) (b) of the Namibia Sports Act to relieve the Namibia Sports Commission board of their duties with immediate effect.
The fired board members are; Joel Matheus, Erica Beukes, Tomas Mbeeli, Alna Similo, Linda Chicalu, Marius Johannes, Karen Mubonenwa and Nicklause Nghumono.
Provision (7) (2) (b) of the Act (Act 12 of 2003) states that the minister may remove members if the members “fail to comply with or contravenes this Act”. The same Act also designates the minister responsible for sport as the appointing authority of both the commission and its chief administrator.
A letter seen by this news agency dated 24 May 2022, addressed to the commission board chairperson, Matheus, stated that the commissioners were being relieved of their duties on account of deliberate insubordination and ignorance of directives from the appointing authority as well as directives from the Office of the Attorney General.
“The tenure of the current Chief Administrator, Mr Freddy Mwiya expired on 31 March 2022, and in my correspondence dated 21 October 2021, I requested that you inform him accordingly,” read the letter.
It also added that in another correspondence dated 21 April 2022, the minister told the board to advertise the position of the chief administrator to allow interested Namibians to apply for this position.
“The same correspondence also requested for a name of a person to act in the interim. Since then I have waited in vain for the position to be advertised as well as the name of the nominee to act,” said Tjongarero in her letter.
She stated that interestingly, the commission chose to allow Mwiya to continue carrying out the functions of the office of the chief administrator, which is in direct contravention of her directives.
“The inability of the commission to comply with requests emanating from the appointing authority is not new. The increase of the chief administrator’s salary was deemed unauthorised by the legal advice to reverse this increase, but something you summarily ignored,” Tjongarero said.
These are amongst the many examples where the commission contravened and failed to comply with the act, hence the reason for their dissolvement, said the minister.’
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
