Hinda-Mbuende says liquidation is a financial matter and not political.

Namcor acting managing director, Maureen Hinda-Mbuende said liquidation is a legal decision based on financial reasons taken by shareholders or by court and not political.

Hinda-Mbuende said she instead wants to share information rather then respond to LPM leader Bernadus Swartbooi, who called for Namcor’s liquidation, saying the company has lost its purpose and wastes taxpayers’ money on endless bailouts.

She explained that a national oil company is not a new phenomenon but a standard practice to execute the mandate of ensuring a given country’s security of fuel supply.

Hinda-Mbuende assured the public that Namcor is stabilising with government’s support as she is focusing on a turnaround strategy.

This includes reviewing processes and controls while assessing risk, and finalising pending disciplinary cases.

She said this also involves addressing labour issues like some staff members being on temporal contracts for many years, outstanding invoices for services procured and brand repositioning.

“Especially now in terms of upstream in the exploration part of business, we need to ensure that we present ourselves as a stable, predictanle and reliable organisation that is run on good governance principles, which will reflects the image that the government stands for to portrays as a suitable environment to attract investment,” she said.

Hinda-Mbuende added that: ” Namcor has gone out of its way to ensure governance principles, or I should rather say, and with the events that have played itself out, I think we as citizenry need to simply just support and applaud Namcor and the government for having gone to that extent of addressing the challenges.”

Swartbooi said the government keeps bailing out Namcor, even as corruption and governance failures continue.

“Then they appoint Maureen Hinda or so, which the deputy prime minister denies any knowledge of at Namcor. Namcor should actually be liquidated. The directorate of energy used to do those purchases and other things,” he said.

Swartbooi said Namcor has no reason to continue as a corporate entity.

“Every time you uncover one issue, another stench comes out. You close that one, open another, more stench. You can’t keep a corporate entity that has completely run amok and still pretend everything is fine while claiming to fight corruption.”

The Acting Managing Director took the opportunity to thank the previous Acting Managing Directors for setting the foundation for the recovery trajectory of Namcor and assured that Namcor is about to return to its days of glory. She thanked One Africa for approaching her office to clarify matters.