Municipality denies access to account
"You give your dogs water, but you can't give us water. Enough is enough! We're tired of it!"This was the general feeling among aggrieved residents of informal settlements in Okahandja during a protest last week where their frustration with the municipality boiled over.
The march followed residents' persistent criticism of the municipality, which in January this year opened an account with First National Bank (FNB) to improve the conditions in the informal areas of the former "Garden Town".
According to community activist Sethy Gariseb, there is no traceable report on the destination or use of the money. Since January, each household in the Ekunde and Vyfrand informal settlements has been paying N$165 into the account every month.
According to Gariseb, the residents of the Promiseland informal settlement in Okahandja, as recommended by the municipality, collected their own money last year, bought water pipes and also dug the holes for the pipes. Yet he says there is still no water, something the residents desperately need.
The disgruntled residents demanded the immediate resignation of the town's mayor Beatrice Kotungondo and the chief executive Alphons Tjitombo due to "their failure to address issues that affect the community and which we have been complaining about for the past nine years".
The residents made it clear that no political gatherings would be allowed in their area until their grievances were addressed.
'Outsiders'
"Some of you are outsiders, that's why you struggle to solve our problems. You don't have our best interests at heart".
When asked, Kotungondo disputed the claim that the municipality is responsible for managing the money in the FNB account
According to her, the development and surveying of the Ekunde Extensions 1, 2, 3 and 6 projects and which were allocated to informal residents, were not in the municipality's budget for the 2023/24 financial year.
"We advised the community to raise money to speed up the surveying process in Ekunde and to help cover 50% of the surveyors' costs," she explained.
Because the residents felt the process was taking too long, according to Kotungondo, it was decided to open an account to speed it up.
"We [the municipality] and the community members [beneficiaries] met with the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) to discuss the progress of the fundraising. They [community members] fully manage the account, the council has no access to it They confirmed that N$207 000 was collected," the mayor said. She also confirmed that community members from the Vyfrand and Oshetu informal settlements pay money into the account with their erf numbers as references.
"The council has no access to the account and no signing rights," she stressed.
Kotungondo says the project is being undertaken in collaboration with NUST to offer students the opportunity to complete their integrated work programmes. According to her, the surveys of land, depending on the engineers involved, usually take six months or longer.
Kotungondo says she feels she is the target of the residents' dissatisfaction because she did not attend the handing over of the petition. "I am a teacher educating about 40 learners; I don't have the time.
"It's not like the petition was neglected, it was handled by the deputy mayor. I don't understand why they wanted me specifically? It's not like I won't chair the meeting about the petition. What exactly is their problem with me?"