THE Lesotho Red Cross Society (LRCS) fired two senior managers for opposing the board‘s decision to award a M2.2 million contract without following tender procedures. thepost can reveal that the Finance Director, Teboho Nkoane, and the Human Resources Manager, Moeketsi Ntlamelle, were suspended in March and fired in July after a protracted disciplinary hearing.
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Their ‘crime’ was to refuse to sign the requisition forms to engage Keyha Trading and Projects (Pty) Ltd. The company is owned by local businessman Abner Moteane. The contract involved the installation of park homes at a site in Maseru West where the LRCS is relocating from its head office in Old Europa.
The LRCS wants to rent out its head office to raise income for operations and projects. With an estimated cost of M2.5 million, relocation and the temporary structures were funded by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), the LRCS’ parent organisation in Geneva.
A project management team of senior managers was appointed to manage the project.
But sometime in February the management was summoned to a meeting where Keyha pitched how it would execute the project.
The meeting was attended by senior staff, the acting secretary general, Sechaba Mokhameleli, and the society’s president Harry Nkhetše.
Sources said after the presentation Mokhameleli said he was impressed and hinted that Keyha would be awarded the contract if it adjusted its prices.
A source said Nkhetše was impressed and promised to sign the waiver to award the contract to Keyha.
The management however objected, insisting that there should be an open tender.
“There was a long discussion but the meeting eventually agreed in principle that the tender should be advertised,” said the source who attended the meeting.
“The management team left that meeting with the impression that the tender would be advertised and follow the usual process managed by the society’s tender panel.”
The tender was advertised in a local newspaper on March 7, some days after that meeting.
But while the advert was still running in the newspaper, the management was called to another meeting where the acting Secretary General told them that the tender had been cancelled and the contract awarded to Keyha.
The secretary general and the president told the management that Keyha had been awarded the contract after it wrote to Nkhetše, the president, complaining about the LRCS inviting bids for the project.
In that March 8 letter, Moteane complained that the LRCS had advertised the tender in bad faith and disregarded its long-standing relation with Keyha.
Moteane said advertising the tender would “harm” the cordial relations between Keyha and the LRCS.
He argued that his company has been commissioned to conduct a Market and Feasibility Assessment of LRCS properties in February 2020 and therefore expected to benefit from work arising from that assessment.
Moteane asked the president to “urgently intervene and assist with a clear and amicable way forward”.
The management however insisted that the tender be advertised and Keyha submit a bid like other companies.
But the president and the acting secretary general remained adamant that Keyha had been awarded the contract.
A few days later, the acting secretary general asked Nkoane and Ntlamelle to sign a requisition form approving Keyha to start the project.
They refused, insisting that the contract had been dubiously awarded because there was no tender and the tender panel was sidelined.
They said the acting secretary general and the president had imposed Keyha despite objections from the management. The acting secretary general responded by suspending the two for misconduct.
He accused them of refusing to implement a directive from a supervisor and defying the National Executive Committee’s decision.
Their disciplinary hearing started in May and dragged on until July 30 when they were found guilty and fired.
The dismissal letters said they were guilty of “gross misconduct for refusing to implement a directive from your supervisor and gross misconduct for challenging and defying the decision of the National Executive Committee”.
“The findings of the Independent Panel found that you refused to carry out a lawful and reasonable instruction that was consistent with your contract of employment,” said a letter seen by thepost.
“In the circumstances, your continued employment during a notice period would be unreasonable.”
While Nkoane and Ntlamelle fought for their jobs Keyha started the project.
So far the company has invoiced M1.7 million as part payment and construction of the temporary structure is almost complete.
Nkoane and Ntlamelle are appealing their dismissal.
thepost has seen minutes of heated meetings over the tender.
At some point the senior management went to Mokhameleli’s office to request a meeting with the board to discuss the relocation project.
The board declined the request.
The minutes show that while acting as secretary general during Mokhameleli’s absence Nkoane discovered a letter from the president to the secretariat office and Moteane discussing the tender.
In that letter, the president mentioned Keyha’s “right to be awarded the job of the Relocation Project as per the Memorandum of Understanding”.
He said the tender had been cancelled so it could be awarded to Keyha based on the MOU.
On March 13 Nkoane and the senior management wrote to Mokhameleli, pointing out that the board should not have been involved in awarding the tender.
“The team feels strongly that the said decision by the Board should have been internalised within executive management to scrutinise the purported MOU with KTP (Keyha),” Nkoane wrote on the senior management’s behalf.
“This would have afforded the team to realise that the said MOU does not constitute basis for awarding the project implementation to KTP.”
Keyha, the letter shows, had been mandated to secure investors for the Red Cross and it would be remunerated when it had completed the assignment.
Nkoane said the project management team noted that the project of relocating to Maseru West “does not interrelate with” the funding model outlined in the MOU between the Board and Keyha.
“This position further illuminates the verity that KTP cannot, in all material respects, allege the right of first refusal in the present project,” Nkoane said.
“We note with affirmation that the MOU/Mandate in issue does not constitute a binding contract on the parties involved, but rather an embodiment of the contemplated relationship between the parties involved.”
He said Keyha “failed to execute its mandate to solicit funding/investor for the duration of the initial term of the MOU in issue”.
Nkoane said the management believed using the MOU to implement the relocation project would be akin to “serious and malevolent misinterpretation of the MOU in issue”.
“This would be to undermine and defy the LRCS internal controls and to go against the prerequisites pertinent to qualifying for the funding from IFRC.”
Nkoane and Ntlamelle refused to comment when contacted this week. Nkoane said he was not ready to discuss the issue while Ntlamelle said the matter is sub judice.
Mokhameleli told thepost it was the board’s decision to hire Keyha and it was his responsibility to ensure the decision was implemented. He said Nkoane and Ntlamelle had no right to defy the board by stalling the execution of the project.
He said the two would still have their jobs if they had obeyed the board’s orders.
Staff Reporter
