2 REPORTS ON MBABANE CEO RECRUITMENT SUBMITTED TO MINISTER

MBABANE -There are allegations that the Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Appolo Maphalala, was presented with two reports on the recruitment of the Municipal Council of Mbabane chief executive officer (CEO).

Sources said the minister should have been furnished with one report from the consultant, which was engaged for the recruitment process. It was stated that the report should have also included input from the councillors. However, two reports eventually found their way to the minister’s office. This is said to have allegedly happened due to a dispute or disagreement among the councillors and management about the preferred candidate for the CEO position, which then led to the compilation of the two separate reports.

Recruitment

The CEO recruitment process has been a topical issue, where it was also gathered that some councillors recommended a candidate who scored the lowest mark in the interview for the position. This happened during one of the council meetings convened to, among other things, deliberate on the report of the consultant who carried out the recruitment exercise. It was gathered that during the council meeting, which had members of the Royal Eswatini Police Service (REPS) present; the councillors ignored the recommendation made by the consultant, as they picked the female candidate who scored 49 per cent and was placed in the third position. They are said to have completely overlooked a candidate who scored 87.5 per cent and had topped them all.

According to a source, the said reports were presented to the minister last week, all with different outcomes. The source said the reports were allegedly different as they recommended different people for the same position. The source explained that procedurally, the consultant conducted the recruitment process and produced a report which was then presented to the councillors, before being taken to the minister. The source stated that in this case, two reports were allegedly availed to the minister, with councillors having their separate report from the one prepared by the consultant.  The source highlighted that the continued vacancy for the CEO was causing instability in the city.  The source revealed that the previous substantive CEO left over six months ago, and this did not give investors and ratepayers confidence in the municipal council structures.

Recommendations

Principal Secretary (PS) in the ministry, Dr Simon Zwane, confirmed that the Mbabane municipality made recommendations to the minister on the new CEO. He said details at this stage were not for public consumption. “Information in this regard will be shared when the appropriate time has come,” Dr Zwane said. He further acknowledged that the leadership void in the municipality was making the city unstable in many ways. When asked how many reports the minister received pertaining to the CEO recruitment, Dr Zwane responded by saying additional details would be shared in due course. Dr Zwane avoided the other questions asked by this publication. The PS had been asked when would the minister announce the new CEO and further asked who would be the minister’s option, following the recruitment process.

Dr Zwane was also asked what action the minister would take to address the concerns of instability within the city. Efforts to get the Mayor, Vusi Tembe, proved futile as his phone rang unanswered. Tembe was sent a questionnaire and he acknowledged its receipt, but he had not responded by the time this publication went for print. Meanwhile, Mbabane Ratespayers Association Chairperson, Patrick Bhembe, said they would allow the recruitment process to be concluded before they could make any comments. Bhembe said the Urban Government Act did not give them the power to make any contributions during the recruitment stage. According to Bhembe, the Act is clear on who recruits a CEO and make recommendations to the minister. He said they were noting the reports on the CEO recruitment and were awaiting the day when the CEO would be announced. Despite not making any inputs on the recruitment, he said it was wrong not to follow the recommendations of the consultant, as they were given terms of reference when they started the whole process.

Hunting

“They should have just done a head-hunting for the CEO, if they had their own person in mind. The way things are playing out; this shows that a candidate was already identified. Engaging a consultant was a waste of time,” Bhembe said. He went on to state that he foresaw a scenario where the minister would shoot down the whole process and recommend that the whole process be started afresh, for transparency. “If they go back to the drawing board and start the process all over again, it means the city will lose more money in the recruitment process,” he said.

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