By Kuzeeko Tjitemisa
WINDHOEK – More than 350 000 residents of Windhoek, which equates to 30 percent of the Windhoek population, live in makeshift shacks, a situation that has led to the city fathers demolishing many of the illegal dwellings in an effort to ensure law and order and to avert any further misfortune in the event of a disaster.
Besides demolishing the shacks, the municipality is also carrying out various awareness programmes at schools and throughout the informal settlements through its Disaster Risk Management Department on the dangers and risks associated with shack dwelling.
Most of the shacks are not regulated unlike with formal settlements where building structures are all formal, and this obstructs and further prevents municipal officials from carrying out their daily duties. “There are no building lines, nor firewalls,” said the Manager of Corporate Communications and Customer Care at the Windhoek Municipality Joshua Amukugo, during an interview with New Era on Monday this week. Using the figures from the survey done in 2010, the number of shacks implies at least one out of three Windhoek residents lives in a shack.
Amukugo said life in the city is proving ever more attractive for those living in rural areas, who are flocking to the city in their hundreds in search of greener pastures.
Once in the city they find themselves with no place to stay and thus resort to illegal land occupation, not aware that the City Police are keeping an eagle eye on them.
With the perpetrators’ land occupation being illegal, Amukugo said trespassers are normally served with a notice requesting them to demolish their shacks and are given deadlines, failure of which the City Police take action by demolishing the shacks.
Asked whether Windhoek can become shack-free by 2030, Amukugo said it is everybody’s idea, although it cannot be forecast and confirmed that it will very well be the case.
“Government’s intervention through the N$45 billion mass housing programme and through TIPEEG (Targeted Intervention Programme for Employment and Economic Growth) underscores government’s determination to tackle the housing backlog head-on in cooperation with local authorities,” he said.
“With government being complemented by the city’s efforts to tackle the same problem, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel,” he added.
Amukugo said the Windhoek Municipality is trying its level best to secure funds for servicing land in addition to all other basic services required.
Asked whether the mushrooming of informal settlements is indeed a challenge, he said: “It is a challenge, for sure, but not an insurmountable challenge though. There is as well an urgent need for each local authority to make its settlement, village or town as attractive to its residents as possible, if influx to other areas is to be curbed,” he said.