The Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises says it is finding it challenging to attract and appoint competent people to serve on the boards of public enterprises, despite following a public recruitment process.
Finance and Public Enterprises Minister Iipumbu Shiimi revealed this while speaking on the issue of the responsibility of directors and shareholders in ensuring the entity’s longevity.
“We have put in place a transparent process where positions that are available are advertised. That process is put in place to attract the right people to become board members of public enterprises, but it does not come without its challenges, because it does not always yield the quality of people you are looking for,” said Shiimi.
He said the ministry had to go back to the drawing board and try and understand why skilled people were not applying to serve on the boards of public entities.
“Maybe we need to dice deeper into that issue to understand why good people are not applying,” Shiimi said.
To overcome the challenge, the ministry was forced to conduct headhunting as a means to attract competent persons to serve on its public enterprises’ boards.
“Sometimes, you will find that three or four applied, who have got the experience, who have got the right skills, but generally you don’t always find the people you are looking for, so at times, you will have to headhunt, to find the skills that you are looking for,” Shiimi said.
Former Public Enterprises Minister Leon Jooste previously highlighted the difficulty his ministry faced in attracting skilled persons to serve on the boards of public enterprises.
“People are terrified of the preconceptions that have been formed; thus, they are not making themselves available,” Jooste said last year after his resignation from government.
In 2019, the then Ministry of Public Enterprises introduced a transparent system in which all board member vacancies were advertised in public media, with shortlisting done by a committee and an interview panel that included relevant private sector experts appointed for the purpose of conducting the final interviews.
