KNOWLEDGE HITS BACK AT PS

MBABANE – Talk about coming out with guns blazing! This best describes the reaction of popular ‘investigator’ in the Ministry of Education and Training, Knowledge Ngwenya, who is spitting fire following accusations made against him.

This comes a few days after he was ordered to refund government about E524 000 for executing duties for a non-existent post.
This was the recommendation made by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) where it was stated that Ngwenya had, for the past five years, not been reporting for duty at his official work station in Nhlangano where he had been promoted to the position of Assistant Career Guidance Officer, in August 2014.
Instead, the PAC heard that Ngwenya continued to work at the ministry’s headquarters and conducted duties that had nothing to do with his job description as he continued to investigate teachers for alleged malpractice.

The PAC said Ngwenya owed government a total of E524 352.38 in respect of salaries paid to the officer yet he failed to assume his new duties from August 2014 to March 31, 2018.

Misdirected

In a seven-page statement he issued yesterday, Ngwenya made it known that he wanted to respond to some of the issues that he felt Principal Secretary, Dr Sibongile Mtshali, had misdirected herself in.
He said his statement was meant to help the PS so that she understood some government operations.

Firstly, he responded to a comment that was made by the PS to the effect that the ministry did not have the post of investigating officer as investigations were carried out by the police who were trained to do such a task.

Ngwenya said in his 15 years investigating experience, he had investigated almost 93 per cent of teachers’ professional misconduct matters which were used by previous schools managers and the current one, Macanjana Motsa.
He said it boggled his mind why the PS wrote an untruth in a response to the Auditor General as per the ministry’s response on page 168 to the audit query about his duties.

In the report, the AG said; “The principal officer instructed the officer (believed to be Ngwenya) to assist the office of the schools manager with an investigation of cases of misconduct by teachers which had been reported. The controlling officer also disclosed that her office arranged that the officer continues to do the investigation work as his recommendation for promotion was based on the officer’s investigation expertise”.

Following the assertion by the AG, Ngwenya said the same PS decided to change tune and insinuate that the post did not exist and that investigations were carried by police officers.

He said his appeal to the PS was for her to furnish the country’s media houses with the names of the police officers she was referring to, together with their force numbers.

“I have never seen any police officer, whether uniformed or not, who has received a single case of professional misconduct of a teacher, head teacher or lecturer for investigation,” Ngwenya said in the statement.

In his view, if there was any officer that the PS had in mind, she should name them and bring forward documents of the investigation work they had done, plus reports that they then submitted to the then National Commissioner of Police, Isaac Magagula.

Elaborating, Ngwenya said the Royal Eswatini Police Service had the constitutional right to do any investigation but that 10 per cent of their investigations were of a criminal nature and not professional misconduct of employer and employee relations.

  Criminal

He said according to his knowledge, police could investigate a reported case of an employee with a  criminal element for their investigation where they will use the reporter as a complainant in most instances and then open an inquiry file.

“And then if evidence points that there is a prima facie case, then open a criminal docket which, on conclusion of evidence collection through statements, will forward the whole docket to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) for analysis, reading, guidance and when satisfactory they will issue a warrant of arrest, then the rest goes on,” stated Ngwenya.

He said the DPP could then advise in the docket that such a case was not prosecutable but could be worked through the disciplinary levels at the workplace.

Hopeful

Ngwenya said he was hopeful that he was yet to be ‘shocked’ to get evidence of 30 cases of teachers investigated and decided by the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) through police investigations, something which he never came across during the former commissioner’s term of office.
“Police officers with force numbers who have investigated and their cases decided upon by the TSC, let me wait and see. For record’s sake, I do not need to prove myself, but my work speaks volumes as even some public prosecutors, officers in different police stations and even at the headquarters, can attest to the fact that Ngwenya knows his work,” he boasted.

Called for comment yesterday, the PS said she was not going to respond to Ngwenya as she had done what was expected of her before the PAC.
“This is an audit query. I never called an audit. I am done,” she said.

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