Fenaka aims to complete structural overhaul by year’s end

Mohamed Najah, the managing director of Fenaka Corporation, told the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on Thursday that the state utility company has initiated a total organizational restructuring process, and expects it to be done before the end of this year.

The Public Accounts Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into Fenaka, as it grapples with years of mismanagement and crippling debt, summoned senior officials from the company, including MD Najah, for a meeting on Thursday afternoon.

At the meeting, Najah said Fenaka has replaced the heads of individual departments accused of wrongdoing, including procurement department and projects department.

Earlier on Thursday, officials from the Auditor General’s Office had told the committee that half of the employees hired by Fenaka over the last three years were appointed without job postings, some even without interviews.

Referring to this, Najah said that Fenaka’s rules and regulations allows for it to hire employees without job postings.

But he said that given this practice has been flagged by the Auditor General’s Office, the company will be rectifying it.

“Our rules and regulations allow us to hire employees without making public announcements. But the audit reports have highlighted that this is not the best practice,” he said.

Najah said the company will be revising its rules to fix the issue.

Speaking further, Najah agreed that the company has a higher number of employees in some islands.

He commented that Fenaka sometimes needs to hire technical staff when the need arises, but said that the company is also working on limiting the number of employees in order to resolve the issue.

Najah added that Fenaka has established an internal committee to carry out a complete overhaul of its structure.

He said that the recommendations of the committee will be presented to the company’s board within this month.

“In Sha Allah, our target is to complete the organizational restructuring by the end of this year,” he said.

Fenaka, which is heavily in debt, has been plagued with allegations of corruption throughout different Maldivian administrations. In September, Ahmed Saeed Mohamed, the former managing director of Fenaka, was sentenced to four years in prison for corruption. He also on trial for multiple other cases of corruption he allegedly perpetrated during his five years as head of the state utility company – allegations that he denies.