Scientific research in crisis

Alfred van Kent, permanent secretary in the higher education ministry, has denied allegations that he was responsible for the resignation of the founding CEO of the National Commission on Research, Science and Technology (NCRST), Eino Mvula.

Mvula left the NCRST at the end of May. His five-year contract with the parastatal was to end in 2019.

His unexpected departure prompted conjecture that Van Kent had dealt him a poor hand by “frustrating” support to NCRST through deliberate budget cuts.

It was also reported that Van Kent had been leading a crusade against Mvula because Van Kent purportedly had his eye on the top job at NCRST, which Mvula clinched.

Mvula has since moved from being a substantive CEO at NCRST to the position of chief operational officer (COO) at the Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF), allegedly as a result of Van Kent's underhanded dealings with him.

Van Kent has categorically denied the allegations.

“As permanent secretary the performance of the institutions that I am responsible for reflects on me and the minister's [Itah Kandjii-Murangi's] performance. His departure is a personal choice. He should not blame it on someone else. I do not know what his reason for leaving is,” said Van Kent when approached for comment.

The institutions Van Kent refers to are Unam, Nust, NCRST, Namibia Training Authority (NTA), National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), and the Namibia Students Financial Assistance Fund (NSFAF).

Van Kent also said that there had been a significant reduction in government funding to all public institutions under the ministry's mandate, and not just NCRST.

“Fiscal consolidation is an exercise that governments go through to ensure managing expenditure and sustainability. For Namibia this is not an exception,” Van Kent said.





He said the N$2.4 billion the higher education ministry had received this year was shared proportionally.

“In my opinion there are institutions that have less operational allocation than the NCRST. All the functional areas under the ministry, vocational education and training, as well as training and research, science and technology and innovation, are critical cornerstones for Namibia's growth. It therefore goes without saying that the reduction of subvention to the ministry affected all agencies resorting under it,” Van Kent added.





The finance ministry has made N$600 million available for institutions of higher learning and that was proportionally allocated mainly to Unam and Nust. Government's subvention to NCRST for 2017/18 has been reduced by 38%.



“The accusation that I have deliberately cut the budget of NCRST is invalid because we have made proportional allocations from money allocated by the finance ministry. His [Mvula's] funding team was part of the discussions when we dealt with these allocations. All institutions are affected and all should live within their means,” countered Van Kent.



He said discussions with the finance ministry were continuing to see how best the challenges facing some of the institutions could be resolved.



“It was agreed with Dr Mvula and his team that the allocations to the development budget would be reviewed in due course,” Van Kent said.



'He ran away'

Insiders preferring anonymity claim that Mvula has “run away” from a sinking ship following a damning forensic investigation by BDO Cyber & Forensic Lab.

Some of the findings of the audit which was conducted for the period of 1 April 2014 to December 2016 were that there has been a “serious breakdown in financial controls” at NCRST.

If further stated that financial procedures had not been followed or complied with, that there was “little or no oversight”, no “clear segregation of duties”, and that there seemed to be “no checks and balances and thus simple fraudulent transactions could go undetected”.

The audit investigation recommended that procurement procedures needed to be re-evaluated and suggested that a full audit be conducted.



The insiders claim that Mvula did not want a full audit to be conducted.



While Mvula did not respond to direct questions put to him, he did say that the BDO audit was commissioned in January on suspicion that two staff members “might have made themselves guilty of serious misconduct pertaining to fraudulent activities related to payments of service providers' accounts”.



Mvula said the findings of the audit were entrusted to NCRST's board finance and audit committee, which had the responsibility to oversee the implementation of the audit's recommendations.



He said he was bound by a confidentiality provision and could not elaborate further on the content of the audit report.



On the financial management of NCRST, Mvula said the parastatal “continues to comply” with legal requirements and that since the establishment of the parastatal in 2013, its financial statements were unqualified, which he said pointed to prudent financial management.



The two staff members investigated by BDO were suspended in December. The insiders claim these suspensions were done without any charges laid against them and without a disciplinary process preceding the suspensions.



One of the suspended staff members has since resigned from NCRST and commenced work at the Business and Intellectual Property Authority (BIPA).



“Who gave him references?” one of the insiders wanted to know, and questioned why the suspensions were not made public since public money was at stake.







Misguided research



The insiders further accused Mvula of having funded research projects that are not necessarily in the public good.



It is alleged that during last year N$14 million was spent on research projects from a handful of “select companies”. It is also alleged that these research projects were not of a strategic or developmental nature but instead were “just research” for the sake of having a research project to access funding.



Mvula said research projects were in priority areas identified under the National Programme for Research, Science and Technology for 2014/15 to 2016/17.



He said these areas included health, agriculture, energy, water, geoscience, mining, environment and tourism, social sciences, ICT, manufacturing technologies, biotechnology and space science.



Mvula said the distribution of research grants reflected the intensity of research taking place at Unam and Nust, while the remainder were distributed among research organisations like the Gobabeb Research and Training Centre and youth innovators' organisations.

ILENI NANDJATO