Staff Reporter<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A GROUP of disgruntled citizens today marched to the head office of the Anti-Corruption Commission, demanding the appointment of special investigators to look into a range of issues related to corruption at the Okahandja, Gobabis, and Windhoek local authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe purpose of this approach is necessitated by the frustration experienced by residents of these local authorities in Namibia. We know and understand your mandate, but it seems you do not appreciate the effect of maladministration on the ordinary citizens of this country, and the burden external debt collectors have on the livelihoods of most Namibian households. It maybe doesn\u2019t appear to you how much effect fraudulently escalated debts through defective billing systems and artificially created debt traps have on poor households. It is against this background\/frustration that we have come to ask you and demand that you look into the following matters as a matter of urgency,\u201d Shaun Gariseb, spokesperson of the Windhoek rate payers, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He detailed that the Okahandja concerned group and rate payers complained to the Anti-Corruption Commission in August 2023, but to date, there\u2019s no progress in the investigation, with follow-ups on the matter yielding nothing decisive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cVarious complaints of maladministration, corruption in the RC informal settlement issue, and the appointment of Redforce Debt Management were registered by the residents of Okahandja,\u201d Gariseb said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Further to this, he claimed that in Gobabis, the municipality is amongst the most corrupt administrations in the history of Namibian local governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is an untouchable cabal running this local authority. The Gobabis complaints were handed in on 20 July 2019, and more complaints were added by the Right to Shelter group in 2022 and 2023, but the investigations are very slow with no progress. In 2023, more than 17 plastic bags of documentary evidence were destroyed by a person against whom there are serious allegations, and a person who was ordered by the labour court not to interfere with the disciplinary process. There’s a possibility that most of that evidence will not be recovered,\u201d Gariseb said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Windhoek, Gariseb said that on 14 September 2023, rate payers of Windhoek handed in a complaint pertaining to concerns around the renewal of the Redforce Debt Management contract, which was renewed by one official without due process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe later learned the complaint was already done by the auditors, so we were just told to wait for investigations to be completed, which we have now done forever. We have followed up about 10 times in two years. We have asked for a resolution through the Ombudsman, and we asked the chairperson of the Public Procurement Board for public documents such as bidding notices, award notices, with no success,\u201d Gariseb said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Staff Reporter A GROUP of disgruntled citizens today marched to the head office of the Anti-Corruption Commission, demanding the appointment of special investigators to look into a range of issues related to corruption at the Okahandja, Gobabis, and Windhoek local authorities. \u201cThe purpose of this approach is necessitated by the frustration experienced by residents of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":369233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-369232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n