By REGINALD KANYANE
31 March 2025- The North West MEC for Community Safety and Transport Management, Wessels Morweng said he has noted and welcomed the ruling of Gauteng High Court sitting in Pretoria on the removal of the Business Rescue Practitioner (BRP) at the NTI. Morweng said following financial difficulties and collapse of governance the NTI experienced, the shareholder resolved to put the entity under voluntary business rescue process in July 2022.
He further said Thomas Hendrick Samons was thereafter appointed as the Business Rescue Practitioner. Morweng added that Samons’ key mandate was to turn the entity around to make it more sustainable and generate income to pay creditors.
“To do this, the BRP was supposed to have developed a plan within 25 days of his appointment as stipulated by the Companies Act. However, the BRP has since failed to do all that including accounting for the money the Government has paid to the entity.
“The department has written numerous letters to the BRP asking for accountability and all the letters went un-replied. Following this failure of the BRP to submit progress reports and account to the department, the matter of removing him was pursued through the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria,” he said.
Morweng said after successfully removing him, the BRP then applied for a leave to appeal the High Court ruling. He said the department then lodged a Section 18 of the Superior Court Act application seeking an implementation of the initial order for the removal of the BRP.
“The purpose of this Section 18 move is to ensure that the court ruling is enforced in spite of the BRP application for a leave to appeal. The judgement, which was handed down electronically on 27 March 2025, enforced the initial ruling that removed the BRP from NTI.
“In handing down the judgement, Judge Hendrick Kooverjie said that the BRP failed to appreciate that he was statutorily obliged to compile the financial records expeditiously. Kooverjie also said that the business rescue process is not intended to continue indefinitely.
“Samons who has been removed as a business rescue practitioner by this court, cannot cling to his position, particularly for personal reasons. The judgement also said that the department as well as the NTI have shown on balance of probabilities that it will suffer irreparable harm, if the orders are not immediately executable,” said Morweng.
He said with the judgement handed down, the NTI must now focus on restoring best management practices. Morweng said the department will now guide NTI management to restore credibility of the entity.
“The NTI provides crucial transportation services and given its history, this entity can surely be better. Following strings of governance failures by the BRP, the we have guided in November 2024, that the department intervene directly at the entity.
“The Head of Department, Dr Hans Kekana then seconded Dr Ntlhopeng Dikobe, who is the Chief Director for Corporate Services at the Department, to be the Acting CEO at NTI,” he said.
He said as accounting officer, Dikobe will then ensure that creditors, primarily of whom are employees, are paid on time and that services are running full steam.
The Guardian 