Oshikango
Businesspeople at Oshikango on the border of Angola have dismissed media reports that trade has started picking up at the town, after a spectacular decline in recent years.
There is hardly any business going on at the town at the moment, some owners of local enterprises said. Businessmen, who chose not to disclose their names, said they have been waiting for government’s intervention since Finance Minister Calle Schlettwein visited the town two months ago.
They say business is the same as it was two months ago, with very few shop owners receiving customers on a daily basis. The situation has led to the closure of several shops as a result of the downturn, while a number of workers have been retrenched as a result.
Trading on the streets is also observed to have declined slightly. Some of the shops New Era visited on Monday said they have hardly had any customers of late and business has not picked up since the recent slowdown in trade.
“How do we say there is business going on at the town, if the food shops are not even getting customers?” Even affording food is a problem for people here, said one of the shop owners.
The business community at the border town had earlier called on government to introduce an electronic payment system, or to create special cards in order to revive business with Angolan nationals at the border town. However, two months later nothing in this respect has materialised yet.
The business community is thus pleading with central government to urgently look into the situation, saying the livelihoods of many people in Oshikango are negatively and severely affected.
Mayor of Helao Nafidi Eliaser Nghipangelwa has repeatedly pleaded for calm, assuring the business community that the situation is receiving positive attention from the government. He said the situation is a national concern, as it impacts on the country’s economy, given that Namibia benefits immensely from import and export with neighbouring countries.