THE National Unity Democratic Organisation (Nudo) has called for an investigation into staff appointments at the Central Procurement Board of Namibia (CPBN).
In April and May this year, the board appointed 14 new staff members. Upon this a post started circulating on social media pointing out the new appointments are all from the same ethnic group.
According to Nudo’s secretary general, Josef Kauandenge, these appointments are questionable.
“Whoever appointed the mentioned employees at the CPBN had ulterior motives, was negligent and had a very clear agenda of advancing a particular tribe,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
Kauandenge said the board has the word “Namibia” in its name, and it is therefore not justified to employ citizens from only one ethnic group.
“If among 16 new positions in a public company only one tribe’s candidates are employed, this raises serious red flags and should be investigated,” he said.
In the statement Nudo calls for an investigation into the job entry requirements, the number of Namibian applicants, when the positions were advertised, how many people were shortlisted, what the scores were among those shortlisted, and why the panel came up with candidates from only one ethnic group.
Kauandenge said the organisation is not implying the newly hired employees do not qualify for their positions, but is questioning the criteria used to appoint them.
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Marketing and stakeholder engagement specialist at the CPBN, Johanna Kambala, responded to the backlash in a media release also issued on Tuesday.
“CPBN has a human resource policy which provides for procedures to be followed in the recruitment and appointment of new staff members,” she said.
Kambala said the first step in the recruitment process is to advertise vacancies in the public domain.
“The recruitment of CPBN staff members is based on the applicants’ qualifications, skills and experience as required by the particular vacancy. As a result the institution processes applications as received from members of the public,” she said.
An online petition has been initiated on www.change.org calling for the CPBN to be “held accountable for its clear neo-apartheid conduct” and for an audit of their vetting and recruitment process.
Currently the petition, which was set up on Tuesday, has more than 1 200 signatures.
