Housing provision a national priority

A lack of decent housing should be tackled at all ends and should not only be left to local authorities but must be on the national agenda.

This was said by the Chief Executive Officer of the City of Windhoek, Moses Matyayi, who stressed that the impact of flush flood-prone areas is one of the issues his office is looking into to alleviate.

Matyayi was a guest on our sister programme, One-On-One.

Matyayi said that the council has been able to put mechanisms in place and plans with the Disastrous Management Plan, which is a continuous discourse to find solutions.

“”We have been able to relocate a number of people from those prone areas and put them into areas where they can at least be able to survive and provide for themselves within the city.”

The City of Windhoek recently authorised a plan to provide electricity to four thousand residents in the informal settlements over a period of five years.

Around 20 percent of the population, however, still does not have access to adequate electricity.

Matyayi, in this regard, expressed doubt over the inability to afford resources to tackle the issue.

“Within our planning aspect, what we have spent through is something that we’ve already studied. It is within the mandate of what we are able to afford, and it is within the resources that we can deploy. And I think for us, we cannot be too unrealistic to actually put up numbers that we would not be able to meet and make promises.”

Concerning this, residents of Katutura have been complaining about the appointment of Red Force as a debt collector.

They said this has impoverished them more because they are bearing the cost of the company’s interests and collection fees.

However, Matyayi said that it is even better for Red Force to collect revenue on behalf of the city, because the interest the City of Windhoek is charging in terms of the Act is even more than what Red Force is charging.