Worried that there may be factual basis to a slew of corruption and maladministration allegations being made by the Botswana Railways Amalgamated Workers Union (BRAWU), then (February 2011) Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Transport and Communications, Mabua Mabua, wasted no time in constituting an investigating committee. The committee was made up of representatives from Botswana Railways management, BRAWU and the ministry itself.
The report identified some concerns which provided basis for the BR Board of Management (then chaired by motor magnate Satar Dada) to order a comprehensive and independent forensic audit investigation. Such investigation was conducted by Deloitte, an international audit firm with offices in Gaborone, which produced its own report seven months later. The report shows scant evidence of maladministration and absolutely none of the corruption that BRAWU alleged.
Topping the list of complaints by union officials was the selling of locomotives for scrap which they felt was a manifestation of corruption. All told, five BD1-type locomotives had been disposed of in that way. Deloitte investigators learnt that all those locomotives had reached the end of their useful economic lifespan of 20 years, were non-operational and beyond economic repair. They learnt from the Chief Mechanical Engineer, Tasala Chidoda, that in 2006, the supplier, General Electric, recommended that the locomotives be retired immediately as Krupp, the German manufacturer who had assembled the locomotives, had closed its plant, thereby compromising the availability of spare parts. A Board of Survey determined the calculated reserve price of each locomotive to range between P170 000 and P500 000.
An open tender to dispose of the locomotives was unsuccessful as various private railway operators didn’t submit bids, considering the locomotives to be economically unrepairable. It was then that BR advertised the disposal of the locomotives as scrap ÔÇô the package also included 12 coaches and seven wagons. The BR Tender Committee approved a bid by Alman Metals for an amount of P804 375. At the time of the audit, P322 560 was still outstanding. The reason for the outstanding payment was that BRAWU had called for an investigation into the disposal of the locomotives which resulted in the transaction being temporarily suspended. Deloitte investigators saw nothing wrong with this sale and did themselves recommend that the locomotives be sold off as it was not cost-effective to repair them.
Another allegation related to service providers not performing warranty repairs. After interviewing the BR CEO, Dominic Ntwaagae, the Technical Services Engineer, Jacob Ntshole, and Chidoda as well as reviewing “voluminous correspondence” between BR and various contractors, the investigators found no evidence that the latter “had ever refused to honour their warranty obligations.”
BRAWU had also alleged that a company called Occulus Mining Supplies (OMS) supplied BR with non-genuine parts and refused to take back incorrectly supplied stock. The investigators identified only one instance where OMS allegedly provided non-genuine axle bearings. Technical staff alleged that the bearings were non-genuine because they didn’t contain grease, whereupon an OMS official travelled to the BR headquarters in Mahalapye and found that the bearings did indeed contain grease.
“We obtained correspondence between Botswana Railways and OMS which confirmed that the matter was resolved and that the bearings did contain grease. We did not find any evidence that OMS refused to take back incorrect stock,” the audit report says.
OMS features in another matter relating to the purchase of an incorrect flywheel which resulted in an engine being incompatible with the existing locomotive fleet. What happened was that Chidoda ordered a 12-cylinder engine when he should have ordered a 16-cylinder engine. In an interview with the Deloitte investigators, he attributed this to “human error.” But there was another problem. In terms of BR’s tender regulations, a tender process has to be followed for purchases of P250 001 and more. The engine in question was worth P2.2 million and the explanation tendered by the Procurement Manager, Mookodi Mogwera, was that OMS offered the speediest delivery which, as it happens, is not a criterion in BR’s procurement policy. It was only in this matter that wrongdoing was attributed to particular individuals and punitive sanction recommended. Deloitte recommended that disciplinary action be instituted against Mogwera for not ensuring that correct tender procedure was followed and against Chidoda for bungling the engine order, in the process causing loss of valuable operational time.
Another BR official who didn’t come smelling of roses in the report was the Carriage and Wagon Manager, Jefferson Mmipi, whom the Deloitte investigators adjudged to have failed to “act in terms of his job description.” That position required Mmipi to maintain wagons but that had not been done with Botswana Salt Open wagons which should be overhauled every eight years. Disciplinary action was also recommended.
For a period of time, staff at the BR maintenance workshop in Mahalapye had been “cannibalizing” spare parts from one asset and using it on another. Investigators found that the cannibalization of locomotives was neither regulated nor managed and had been a source of concern in the Rolling Stock Section. One locomotive, which is identified only as BD337 was cannibalized after being stabled at the workshop. At a subsequent stage, Chidoda made a request for spare parts to rebuild the locomotive and GE provided a quotation for US$65 858. “However, due to the failure rate and maintenance requirements of the remaining BD3 fleet, the new parts were upon arrival, immediately used to keep the other locomotives running,” the audit report says.
Deloitte recommended that BR should finalise a cannibalization policy, which at the time of the investigation, was still being developed.
Nowhere in the report is criminal wrongdoing in the form of corruption mentioned ÔÇô the investigators don’t use “corruption” in an affirmative sense and no corruption case was referred to the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime. While finding some of BRAWU’s concerns “unfounded”, the report notes that “there is substantial room for improvement in the maintenance of assets and the compliance with prescribed policies and procedures in relation thereto.” In some instances, the investigators reached conclusions that were different from those earlier made by Mabua’s committee.
The report was submitted to Dada as Board Chairman in January 2013 and for those who instigated the investigation, its contents spell bad news. With no acts of corruption having been found, BRAWU’s ability to make meaningful whistleblowing intervention in the future has been desperately compromised. The next time union officials want management investigated, they would likely be met with a variation of Would you be the same union that made false allegations about corruption in 2011?
However, the report also implicates management in one crucial aspect that carries a seminal lesson for all other organisations. A situation where administrative lapses are imagined to be corruption points to the fact that the internal communication function is not robust enough.
