EDITORIAL: The Kandjii-Murangi S&T shame

The Anti-Corruption Commission’s (ACC) findings into the travel allowance debacle of higher education minister Dr Itah Kandjii-Murangi is damning, but it is the lack of consequences that is most shocking.

It demonstrates how avaricious and immoral our officials are that the minister spent N$930 000 on travel expenses in the span of three months - money her ministry did not have. If ministers are spending that much every three months, it averages N$3.7 million in foreign trips per minister per year.

This figure does not include local travel, which could cost just as much – given the frequency of ministers’ domestic travels. Although executive director Dr Alfred van Kent received a fair scolding, Kandjii-Murangi has escaped punishment. Nowhere in the ACC report is the minister properly reprimanded for landing the ministry into debt totalling nearly N$1 million from her insatiable borrowing spree. The fact that she hasn’t provided any reports outlining how the nation benefitted from her travels may be the worst indictment of all.

This probe is also a wake-up call for President Hage Geingob, who approved these trips without ascertaining whether there were funds available. It’s easy for ministers to name-drop and bully their technocrats by simply stating that the president has approved the trip, and that those officials must find the non-existent funds by hook or crook. And by crook Van Kent did it. There’s no legal instruments allowing the borrowing of money from public enterprises. These are not lending institutions, and their respective CEOs must bury their heads in the sand in shame.