Obrein Simasiku
Omuthiya-The Omuthiya Town Council, which was on the verge of awarding plots serviced at Extension 8 to residents, will no longer be able to deliver on its promise as its land budget for this year was slashed by N$8 million.
Initially the local authority received a budget of N$10 million to be used for servicing land, however it only received N$2 million this year, which the CEO Samuel Mbango said has negatively affected their efforts to make land available.
“We were in the process of finalising Extension 8 by putting up electricity and selling the plots towards the end of this year, but now we are not going to do it anymore because we are negatively affected. We are left with an option of soliciting funding somewhere,” said Mbango.
Mbango added that electrification of the area was supposed to cost N$14 million.
“The gap is huge now; we were prepared to top up with N$4 million, or we could have cut the budget in order to contain it in N$10 million,” said a distraught Mbango.
Meanwhile, construction of roads and the sewerage system has been completed. He added that some of their planned projects would not be realised because they did not receive a cent for them. Mbango said they had submitted three project proposals, but only received N$2 million for one project, while the rest were shelved.
Earlier this year the council stated that approximately 180 predesigned erven in Omuthiya were completed and the plots are now available for prospective buyers, mainly those that are already on the town council’s waiting list.