Half of Fenaka’s hirings over last three years made without job postings

Fenaka Corporation. (Photo/Fenaka)

Half of the employees hired over the last three years by Fenaka Corporation – a state utility company grappling with mismanagement and crippling debt – were appointed without job postings, according to information provided by the Auditor General’s Office to the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

The Public Accounts Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into Fenaka, summoned senior officials from the AGO for a meeting on Thursday.

At the meeting, Abdulla Zuhuree, the director general at the AGO, shared key concerns regarding the company’s recruitment process.

According to him, Fenaka had:

3,500 employees in 2020
6,600 employees in 2023

Zuhuree said Fenaka had 5,000 permanent employees in 2024, and some 2,900 employees hired as temps for various projects.

Parliament's Public Accounts Committee holds a meeting with sfficials from the Auditor General's Office on October 23, 2025. (Photo/People's Majlis)

It marks a 78 percent increase in permanent employees from 2020.

Zuhuree said that audits uncovered the number of employees hired in some islands far exceeded the scale of operations.

He said that the hirings resulted in an increase in payroll expenses in 2022 and 2023 by 38 percent and 39 percent, respectively.

The audits also uncovered that a large number of employees were hired without job postings, some without even getting interviewed.

According to Zuhuree, 50 percent of employees hired in 2022, 2023 and 2024 were appointed without job postings.

Abdulla Zuhuree at the meeting with the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee on October 23, 2025. (Photo/People's Majlis)

The AGO also found discrepancies in the number of employees in islands with the same scale of operations.

“Looking at islands with the same scale of electricity and sanitation systems, with some 122 or 130 connections, one island had more than 30 employees, while other islands had around 15 employees,” 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.