Staff Reporter
THE City of Windhoek has painted a stark picture in its fight to eradicate informal settlements in the capital, stating that while it annually requires about N$1 billion to formalise informal settlements in the capital alone, it is severely underfunded, with only about N$53 million provided for informal settlement upgrades this financial year.
This was revealed by the City’s section engineer for housing, Theunis Heunis, who said that funding challenges and the lack of land in the city have exacerbated the housing crisis in the country.
Speaking at the event, the CEO of the City of Windhoek said that the municipal council faces the mammoth task of solving the housing crisis, with a limited number of residents footing the bill, and that this is exacerbated by the fact that the local authority is not fully subsidised by the government, but only receives project-based funding.
Matyayi said that Windhoek currently has the highest number of informal settlements, with a total of 150 settlements recorded. He added that the capital has about 500 000 inhabitants and that, of this, more than 200 000 inhabitants live in informal settlements, which he said are not documented. He added that due to this lack of documentation on the City’s systems, only about 60 000 residents carry the weight of the N$5 billion city budget, which pays for services, rates, and taxes.
“The informal settlements do not pay anything to the city, but the expectation is that we bring the water to them. They do not have an erf, and it is not registered; therefore, we cannot charge them rates and taxes… Now we must find real solutions to the problem and the people,” Matyayi said.
Heunis, the City’s section housing engineer, reiterated the sentiments by Matyayi and added that about 46.1% of Windhoek’s population stays in informal settlements, which equates to a backlog of 65 000 houses.
“Windhoek in itself is in trouble as everyone is flocking to Windhoek. You cannot stop migration. So one of the directives of NDP6 is that 50% of informal settlements must be eradicated by 2030, which is in the next four years,” Heunis said.
The second biggest town to Windhoek with informal settlements is Rundu, which has 67 411 inhabitants in impoverished housing, followed by Walvis Bay with 31 822, and then Swakopmund with 29 961.
“We need at least N$900 million to help us service the number of plots. For this financial year, we were allocated a total of N$53 million. We need close to a billion a year for Windhoek alone to solve the informal housing crisis,” Heunis said.
He added that to service 55 000 erven, they would need about N$17 billion.
Photo: File
