The City of Windhoek is finalising the appointment of a headhunting agency to recruit a suitable chief executive officer, after advertising the post four times and failing to find a replacement for Niilo Taapopi, whose contract expired in December 2014.
Fillemon Hambuda is currently the acting CEO.
The chairperson of the City’s CEO recruitment panel Sven Thieme said they are in the process of finalising the appointment of a headhunting agency.
Asked whether the position will be advertised again, Thieme said it had been already been advertised four times, and there is no point in doing the same thing again.
He said the dream was to conclude the recruitment of the new CEO by the end of May, but with all the public holidays this month, this was unlikely to happen.
Contacted for comment, Urban and Rural Development Minister Sophia Shaningwa said she had instructed the City to re-advertise or headhunt, to ensure that a suitable person is found.
“They are always informing me on their predicament. I advised them to either re-advertise or headhunt. How they do it is entirely up to them,” she said.
Asked how she feels about the length of time the position has been vacant, Shaningwa said how she feels is not important, and that finding a suitable candidate remains the aim.
“It’s about finding the right candidate,” she reiterated.
City councillor Joseph Kauandenge, who expressed his disappointment with the lack of pace associated with the recruitment process, said: “It I a very critical position and to be vacant this long is counterproductive.”
Kauandenge revealed that previously someone had been shortlisted, but she would have needed to have spent two years being an understudy, before taking over the reins.
Asked about others who have been shortlisted in the past, he said they were told that the individuals did not meet the criteria.
In March, a special City of Windhoek Management Committee meeting took place, while a special council session was also held to make a decision about the vacant CEO position.
This followed an instruction by Shaningwa to the council to expedite the recruitment of a new CEO
At the special meeting, the new city councillors had to acquaint themselves with documents regarding the recruitment of a new CEO.
“These documents are very sensitive documents and involve people’s CVs and other personal data, so they were not allowed to go home with these documents,” a source said at the time.
This allegedly infuriated Kauandenge, who is said to have walked out of that meeting.
“I find it outrageous that people who have been sitting with this information for the past two years, and who have failed to appoint the CEO on four different occasions, are now giving us an hour to read a thick document like that,” Kauandenge later wrote in a press statement.
“This document is about 90 pages long. It contains the whole process followed since the start of the first advertisements and interview panel recommendations.
“To make matters worse we were told to read that thick document in an hour and then apply our minds as to what is the way forward in terms of the appointment of the new CEO,” Kauandenge said.
According to him, equally disturbing was the fact they could not take the document home.
“An institution that cannot trust its own councillors with sensitive information, is an institution that itself has too much baggage to hide, nothing more and nothing less.
“What I refuse to accept and will fight with all at my disposal is my right as an elected councillor to have a right to information in the execution of my duties,” Kauandenge said.
“As much as they (Swapo) have a majority, I refuse to become a ‘yes man’ and accept decisions that border on limitations on my fundamental human rights. I refuse to become a zombie that only responds to the voice of its master.”
He said the council management committee should be called to order, as they had erred in the application and interpretation of the rules.
“I will continue to seek other avenues, including a legal opinion on this matter on the way forward,” Kauandenge added.
GORDON JOSEPH