• Society

Okahandja residents demonstrate

- 2023-03-28 10:26:00

Okahandja's leadership is under siege, with residents from Veddersdal and the town itself starting to camp in front of the municipality yesterday.
This while residents of informal settlements went to Windhoek again on Monday to ask the Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Erastus Uutoni, for urgent intervention. The Okahandja Concerned Group also marched to his office in August last year.
Uutoni met with the "illegal" residents of Okahandja yesterday morning, after they travelled to the capital by bus, and demonstrated from B1 City to the ministry's headquarters. They demand land ownership, service delivery and development in the town, especially in the settlements where a lack of power and water hinders the residents' living conditions.
He met them together with members of Okahandja's town council and municipal leadership. He urged the disgruntled Okahandja residents to approach their elected representatives and instructed the deputy mayor, Akser Aupindi, to meet and communicate with the communities in the settlements.
"These people just need information and love," Uutoni insists.
Nothing being done
However, community activist Sethy Gariseb, says that municipal and elected leaders are doing nothing, and he complains that the group is simply being sent back and forth.
Twenty plots at Ekunde 4 and 5 were allegedly allocated to resettle residents of RCC Camp after they received eviction letters earlier this year.
Aupindi says the landfill at Ekunde 4 and 5 will be removed while the town council waits for an environmental clearance certificate to establish the new neighbourhoods. Okahandja's municipal chief executive, Alphons Tjitombo, was also present.
Tjitombo was singled out in the latest indictment handed down recently. In it he is accused of being incompetent and arrogant and not listening. Residents also say they have no confidence in Tjitombo.
According to Beres Steenkamp of Veddersdal, there are rumors that Tjitombo gave the debt collectors Red Force permission to cut off people's water supply due to non-payment.
"Many of our senior citizens' water has been shut off because some of them have debts of up to N$30 000. Red Force does not negotiate and insists that the full amount be paid. Where do they get the mandate to cut off water? Red Force is a problem in Okahandja," he says.
In a complaint already submitted on 24 February, residents list demands for a five-year development plan for the town, performance assessment for all department heads, transparency in terms of municipal finances and a cooperation agreement between the town council and the residents.
"We are ready to help," he says. No reply has been received so far, according to Steenkamp.
A community leader in Veddersdal, Marietjie Coetzee, agrees that the town is in a state of disrepair. She also mentions potholes, water pipes that constantly burst and power outages that take days to sort out.
"The town is in a terrible state," she says, referring to the municipality's recent failure to remove rubbish. Now trucks have apparently been hired and people from outside the town hired to clean.
Coetzee says: "It seems as if they are just laughing at us. They don't see it as a serious matter."
Steenkamp says the protest action in front of the municipal doors will continue all week, or until someone responds.
The town's mayor, Kaunapawu Fillemon, reportedly refused to come out of her office yesterday. Steenkamp expects the protest action to grow in numbers today when the informal settlement's residents are expected to join the residents. – [email protected]