Rehoboth in report dilemmaMinistry must explain recommendations The United People''s Party has accused the Swapo town councillors of being unwilling to implement the recommendations of a report on the Rehoboth town council''s affairs. The United People''s Party (UPM) wants the minister of urban and rural development, Sophia Shaningwa, to halt the re-election of office bearers at the Rehoboth town council until the recommendations of a report that incriminated the council''s human resources manager, Willie Swartz, are implemented. The report sent to the council last week recommended that all decisions taken at a council meeting on 14 December 2015 must be revoked because the council was in recess.
Chief among these decisions was the reinstatement of Willie Swartz as human resources manager following his voluntary resignation earlier that year.
In a statement yesterday UPM accused the Swapo councillors of being unwilling to implement the recommendations.
“The UPM has complained several times about the incompetence of the Swapo councillors. The claim that they do not understand the report confirms claims of incompetence,” the party said.
UPM councillor Lennie Pienaar confirmed that the council had discussed the report but according to him the Swapo Party councillors said they did not understand its contents.
“We will give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens after the meeting with the ministry officials,” he said.
According to Swapo councillor Vincent Uirab the council resolved that the recommendations would be implemented once the ministry task team had explained the report to the councillors.
“There are rumours that we are dilly-dallying around the report but we do not have a problem implementing the recommendations. It is also not an issue of not understanding the report but one person might understand while another might not,” he said.
Uirab said the report had not been officially handed over to the council and therefore remained the property of the ministry.
He added that Minister Shaningwa had offered to send a task team to present the report to the council on Tuesday, but that depended on the availability of the task team.
Meanwhile, Rehoboth CEO Christophe /Uirab says he requested ministerial staff to be present at the meeting on Tuesday to clarify some issues in the report.
“All I can say is that the council does have the right to ask for clarity on issues,” he said.
Deputy minister Derek Klazen said the permanent secretary was instructed to explain the report since it was an “administrative” issue.
JEMIMA BEUKES