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{
    "id": 698050,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/698050/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 128,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. (Dr.) Nyikal",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 434,
        "legal_name": "James Nyikal",
        "slug": "james-nyikal"
    },
    "content": "power. In the private sector, benefits would go to the shareholders. We cannot say what their role entails in the public domain and the economic stability of a country. What do we experience in this country today? To a large extent, we are actually seeing a general failure at that level. Large Government parastatals are actually going down. We do not want to mention names but they are actually clear. It is not as if the people who are running them eventually get any sanctions against them. They run down the companies they have been appointed to head. They are then moved to the next company or given political positions. It is sad that some flagship companies have “died”. Companies that have been the kingpins or foundations of certain production areas have “died”. Often nothing happens because to a large extent, we have not looked at the competence and integrity of the people running these companies, namely the directors. The situation is made worse by corruption, nepotism, political interference and appointment through political consideration and yet there is no clear criterion, in terms of qualifications and integrity, requiring the appointing authority to consider before appointing somebody as a director. The only sanction often left to us is to go through the legal way. This will enable us to find out what went wrong. What is it that led to companies’ collapse, which in turn let the country down? If it is through procurement or banking or whatever they did, a solution must be found. Quite often, legal processes do not work because they are totally incapacitated and weakened by collusion. In a perfect collusion, you can never get anything done because the people appointed in those positions safeguard and collude with criminals, the legal and the security systems. There is no known remedy for a perfect collusion. In a perfect collusion, every person who is supposed to be a safeguard will give you evidence. The best was the Goldenberg scandal. There was paper evidence that gold was being produced; processed; actually passed through the airport and money was coming back. Everybody in the team was part of the collusion. Therefore, there was not much that could be done at the time. It is, therefore, important that we bring a regulatory element into the selection of directors and their functions. I support this Bill because it brings in the issue of registration of directors. There will be criteria for registration, qualification and capacity. It also brings in disciplinary measures that can be taken, which will be of a professional nature so that people can for once be sanctioned professionally. Whatever the profession they are in, they cannot practise in the profession thereafter if they have shown lack of integrity or competence. The Bill also brings the element of training. That is extremely important because the positions of director, which is an issue we can discuss later--- There is no known profession where you can say the people who are going to be directors. You can have engineers, medical doctors and lawyers as directors. There is, therefore, some form of training and capacity building so that when they are in a position where they are in charge of the overall management of institutions then they will do a good job. Of course, it is important that one has core competence in an area. For example, if an engineer is running an engineering company, he or she will do better if he or she has further training in management. It has been argued in management that anybody can be a manager anywhere, but from my experience, if you have a core competence and management skills, then you do much better. Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, I have issues that we will look at with the Mover of this Bill. I congratulate him. We need to look at clauses 21 and 22 which provide for the qualification of members of this Institute. It has not come out clearly how members will be picked. The clauses say:- The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposesonly. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}