Confusion over new Communications DG
ITWeb yesterday reported that “Communications Minister Siphiwe Nyanda has appointed Mamodupi Mohlala as his new director-general at the Department of Communications (DOC).”
The Department of Communications however denies that any official DG appointment has been made. The DoC Ministry spokesperson said that he is not certain where the information about the DG appointment was sourced, but that no official decision about the appointment of a new Communications DG has been made.
Mamodupi Mohlala currently heads up the Pension Funds Adjudicator (PFA), and according to the organization Mohlala has not resigned and there is no official plan to replace her as the PFA head.
Despite the uncertainty, it is not unlikely that Mohlala has been selected as the new Communications DG. Mohlala is well known in the telecoms and communications arena having served as an ICASA Councilor for many years.
During her tenure at ICASA, Mohlala was no stranger to controversy and was accused of moonlighting through her legal practice. According to the Sunday Times “some of the work was for a telecoms industry player and might have constituted a conflict of interests, and contravened her councillor’s code of conduct and the ICASA Act.”
Mohlala was also heading the ICASA ADSL Regulations, seen by many as a poor set of regulations which have done little to improve the provisioning of ADSL in South Africa.
Mohlala is a qualified attorney, having studied at both the University of Swaziland and the University of the Witwatersrand. Mohlala was nominated for the position as ICASA councilor by Wireless Business Solutions, the iBurst holding company.
Should Mohlala be appointed as the new DG she will take over from Ms Gerda Grabe, the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of the Department of Communications, who acted as Director-General after the departure of previous DG Lyndall Shope-Mafole in January.
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