Niël Terblanché
AS residents of Okahandja faced yet another day of having to drive around town to find clean drinking water, three employees of the municipality, who have been arrested for theft of N$90 000 of ratepayers money, stood in court to apply for bail.
Residents who has been without running water since the start of the past weekend because flood water washed away the main supply line, are up in arms because the municipality does not have enough money to buy spare parts to affect repairs.
This is the third time in two weeks that the water supply of the town has been interrupted by flood water. After the first interruptions, technicians were able to repair the broken pipe and on the second occasion business owners and residents assisted with the repairs.
The latest flood, however, washed away an entire section of the main water supply line which means that spare parts will have to be bought from Windhoek and the local authority does not have enough cash to make the necessary purchase. This left most of Okahandja and the outlaying residential areas such as Veddersdal without drinking water
Residents are forced to collect water from water tankers operated by NamWater and the municipality.
According to one of the business owners that has been negatively affected by the lack of clean running water said that the person who had to buy the spare parts for the water supply line could not get a purchase order from his superiors.
“Once he had the purchase order the supplier did not accept the document because of unpaid debt by the Okahandja municipality. We as the business community who pay a lot of money each month will now have to fork out extra cash again to assist the municipality to buy the necessary spare parts. And that is unacceptable,” the business owner said.
During the three municipal workers’ appearance in court three different groups of people pitched up at the court building to stage a protest. The one group is in support of the suspended Chief Executive Officer of Okahandja, Martha Mutilifa, who is reportedly running the municipality from home.
The second group showed up in support of the current Mayor, Johannes ‘Congo’ Hindjou, who is also acting as the town council’s Chief Executive Officer while the third group staged a protest against the granting of bail for the three women accused of stealing rate payers’ money.
Tensions at the court building rose as the different groups of protesters started shouting insults at each other about which one of the municipal officials are the most corrupt while the third group insisted that all municipal officials are thieves.
