Okahandja’s plight remains unanswered
Request to minister yields naught
Residents of Okahandja's settlements insist on development, and seek answers or even just a response from the town council and municipal leaders who simply ignore them, community activist Sethy Gariseb said.Last month, he accompanied members of his community to lodge a complaint with the Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Erastus Uutoni, at the ministry's head office in Windhoek. The complaint asked for Uutoni's intervention in the municipality of Okahandja's affairs.
Despite the minister's promise that he would contact Okahandja's leadership and request a meeting between town council and residents, Gariseb said their issues have not yet received attention. “No one called. There was no meeting after our last march.”
A meeting was called to inform the community about a project by the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) to paint numbers on their houses.
According to Erastus Nambenga, a member of the group committee, they had already numbered their houses themselves in February and conducted a survey of more than 4 000 dwellings in Vergenoeg, Oshetu I and II, and other areas north, west and south of Okahandja’s town centre.
The community also dug ditches last year to install the first nearby water points.
“We want something to happen. When do we get ownership?” he wanted to know.
Gariseb said the community is ready to take matters into their own hands. “Give us the right to service our own land, to build dry toilets and put up lights,” he said. “If they don't want to help us, we will follow the law and do it for ourselves.”
Nambenga also shared more on the conditions in which the communities live: “Last week, three women were stabbed because they had to use the river bed. People going to work early are robbed. Children cannot study by candlelight. There are still people living at the landfill, which the municipality is unable to move. Who will bring back Okahandja’s status as the garden town it once was?”
“We ask the minister to intervene or we will skip him and take our own steps. We will be back, again and again. I have nothing to do with politics, but I stand up for the old people and this time we will not be humble,” Gariseb said.
“We want land and we will not stop. It is our constitutional right to get land,” Nambenga said. – [email protected]