NKURENKURU – The National Housing Enterprise (NHE) on Tuesday broke ground for the construction of some 172 housing units at Nkurenkuru in the Kavango West region. NHE’s executive for infrastructure development Thomas Shilongo said they have appointed Tweya Consulting Engineers as the contractor to do the bulk servicing of the area designated for the construction of the houses.
“We are with the town council, and we are very happy for this momentous moment for the sense that we have for a very long time wanted to commence this project since acquiring the plots years back. Today, we are officially opening the site,” he said during the ceremony.
The last time NHE had a project at the river town was in 2017 with their first-ever project there when they built 286 housing units under the Mass Housing Development Programme.
“With that, we want to add to that number, as we understand the housing crisis in the country is a daunting task. This is another demonstration from NHE that we continue to impact and continue to uplift our mandate,’’ he noted.
He said once the installation of services starts, it will run parallel with the housing construction. “In an effort to accelerate housing delivery, we continue to fight the housing crisis and backlog in the country.
The design cost is N$1.2 million. After the design, we will then do an estimation for the actual construction of the services, and then estimate the actual construction cost of the houses,’’ he said.
The Nkurenkuru Town Council donated the land to NHE.
“We urge more local authorities to provide land for housing development to NHE for us to build houses.
As you can see, we are on the project site, and the project is only starting now.
“We are at the design phase. It is earmarked to be completed by December – just before the end of the year.
Construction is earmarked to start towards the end of January or early February. It will take about seven months to complete the construction,’’ he said.