Grootfontein
Grootfontein is home to the biggest informal settlement in Namibia confirmed the head of property at Grootfontein, Arnold /Ameb.
In an interview with New Era, Ameb said there is a need in the town to urgently address the ever-growing informal settlement that has now become uncontrollable in the town.
“An important issue is housing and services to the really low income people in the informal settlement, we would like to fully service and formalise our informal settlements,” he said. The mushrooming of informal settlements in the country has become a national issue as many landless youth have reverted to acquiring land to address the snail pace process of land delivery. Many local authorities have called for speedy land delivery as sanitation as basic essential services such as water and sanitation is expensive.
Ameb said this move would improve living standards of thousands of settlers in the town. “This will allow specific people to upgrade their housing standards and living conditions,” he said. Ameb also called for the mass housing project to be decentralised and for local authorities to make use of regional planners or consultants to cut out middleman in the land delivery process. New Era recently reported Grootfontein offers affordable housing and land contrary to other towns that have exorbitant land prices. Ameb said although land is available serviced land is still a scarce as the exercise to provide serviced land has been a costly exercise which the local authority cannot afford.“Council does not have enough serviced land to cater for the demand and no funds to do so, land delivery budget from central government is very low for Grootfontein,” he stated.