By Petronella Sibeene
WINDHOEK
A lack of a sense of responsibility and accountability has led to the downfall of many village councils, an assessment report has revealed.
The report, containing recent findings by the Ministry of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development and other stakeholders, shows that there is a general lack of commitment by village council leadership towards production. This has resulted in poor performance.
The situation remains bad despite training of officials and councillors.
There are 18 village councils countrywide.
Village councils have long been operating at a loss. Many village councils reportedly provide poor services to their customers while others stand accused of mismanagement of funds.
The assessment found that technical knowledge is seriously lacking among leadership as well as officials in charge of administration and finance.
This was attributed to the educational qualifications of personnel with the majority being either Grade 10 or 12 certificate holders, if not lower.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development, Erastus Negonga, told New Era that most village councils have similar operational challenges.
The acute shortage or non-existence of major revenue bases to boost council budgets remains a major hurdle.
“Personnel in charge of administration and management have proven, from the records contained in the report, that they are dismally failing to perform to standard and they will not improve on their own. They lack the necessary capacity to run and manage the budget,” the report says.
Although the ministry previously trained accountants and village secretaries and conducted follow-up in-service training, the same entities revert to disappointing performance levels.
Negonga said the demand for land and other developed properties in most towns has diminished, robbing most councils of the potential to grow local economies.
Because of the unattractiveness of these villages, no new business premises have been set up for years to support the old structures and as such the number of maximum demand users is small and their contribution to the economies insignificant.
“These towns (village councils) are fast becoming ghost towns. Interest by both residents and outsiders to invest has frozen. You can hardly see any formal building structure erected within the past three years,” said Negonga.
Implementation of housing schemes is also poor due to ignorance from the council management while the housing demand remains low.
The ministry has set aside an intervention budget of N$13 million and training forms part of the activities the ministry introduced in an effort to counter this problem.