Staff Reporter
THE City of Windhoek (CoW) Mayor Sade Gawanas said that the Council is acutely aware of the financial situation of the city, but it is unrealistic to expect high impact change within a year and a half, adding that “the Council has not failed” in its mission.
Gawanas said this a press briefing on Tuesday, where she noted that CoW “may look good from the outside, but it has been rotting, decaying slowly, but surely”.
Still, she said, the Council has not failed in its mission to effect change that can benefit the most vulnerable, but some individuals have.
This comes after the Councillor Jürgen Hecht described CoW’s financial situation as “catastrophic” at a press briefing that was hosted by the Chairperson of the Management Committee, Ndeshihafela Larandja, on Monday.
Despite referring to Monday’s briefing as “an opportunistic press conference”, Gawanas insisted that Tuesday’s briefing is not a reaction to the previous one held by Larandja, but was scheduled for CoW to report on the activities of the Council for the past six months.
She added that the Council even has some good news, having completed and approved a number of high impact activities and resolutions over the last six months.
According to her, the Council has achieved a several milestones with regards to land and housing. These include the relocation of 215 households from the Eneas Peter Nanyemba Road to planned sites at Farm 1030, the construction and delivery of 320 houses in low-income areas in Windhoek, the servicing eight erven for construction through a project that will be known as the Windhoek Housing Programme (WHP), the co-development for the servicing 2 903 erven zones and the signing of 978 leases in the informal settlements.
The latter, she acknowledged, is extremely low and requires reviewing. Moreover, she revealed that the construction and delivery of the 320 houses is also not a complete success as the municipality was actually supposed to construct and deliver 600 houses in low-income areas in Windhoek by June 2022. This is according to a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the municipality, the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development, Khomas Regional Council and the National Housing Enterprise (NHE).
With regards to the other milestones, she said that the Municipality of Windhoek issued 29 136 Acknowledgement of Occupation certificates and 21 133 of these certificates were issued to household heads in the informal settlement. This certificate, she explained, is especially beneficial to people living in the informal settlements who have not undergone any form of planning.
The Council, she said, also completed 1 025 and 1 669 individual electricity connections in informal settlements in 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 respectively. She added that some informal settlements were also provided with area lighting to improve the public safety and visibility.
“These were just a few of the high impact activities and resolutions completed and approved over the last six months. The next six months will be equally busy and focused on implementing as many resolutions as possible whilst finalising all outstanding and equally important matters,” she added.
