There has been a plethora of media reports lately about the shocking state of houses constructed under government’s mass housing scheme.
The Namibian reported last month that about 30 houses constructed under this scheme at Walvis Bay have been vandalised.
Some houses, according to that report, are without doors while the windowpanes of others were smashed. In this edition we report on the state of mass houses at Keetmanshoop, where passers-by and street dwellers are relieving themselves in the houses when nature calls.
The irony in this story is that those relieving themselves in the houses are homeless people – the very people the project is intended to help.
It is sad that after spending millions of public funds on these houses – a noble intervention by any measure – we are now allowing them to lie idle and be vandalised, instead of disbursing them.
Delaying giving out the houses to those who want and can afford them means vandalism will continue unabated and more public funds would be required to fix such damage.
True, some of these houses are not yet connected to services such as water and electricity supply, and therefore cannot be handed out to the masses who are tired of renting or living in shacks.
The fact that these houses are still without access to water and electricity is, in itself, disappointing given the fact that the land on which they are built was identified long ago and is not serviced to date.
Part of the problem is that many local authorities are severely underfunded and can therefore not afford to service land on which mass houses are [to be] constructed.
Just over a week ago, the City of Windhoek publicly asked government to write off more than N$500 million of its debts. One can therefore imagine what the situation looks like in remote town such as Oshikuku, where mass houses remain unoccupied – although this is partly due to non-affordability.
Both government and the National Housing Enterprise (NHE) have not really come out to announce what the disbursement formula for these houses is. In other words, who is to receive a house and when.
It is difficult to justify why houses stand empty in a country rocked by what is fast becoming a housing crisis of monumental proportions.
To all intents and purposes, these houses were constructed for occupancy – not for street dwellers to relieve themselves in and thieves to steal window and door frames carte blanche.
We did not commit N$45 billion to this project to leave its products to the mercy of whoever cared to do what they wished with the houses.
We are not in agreement with those charging that mass housing is a bad idea. We sincerely believe it is a great and noble intervention by our government because we needed to act on this situation before it spiralled into a full-blown disaster.
But we cannot create excitement with big announcements and later leave houses in the state they currently are. We demand answers from the responsible custodians of this project as to why completed houses are not being availed to the needy and what is being done to protect houses from vandalism, and other sorts of damage, as evidenced in recent media reports. We rest our case!