Windhoek
The newly proclaimed Bukalo Village Council (BVC) says it will repossess scores of residential plots unevenly doled out to several senior government officials, some of whom received six plots each despite the fact that other people are without plots.
Speaking to New Era the chief executive officer of the BVC, Martin Limbo, said the lopsided plot allocations were portioned out by officials seconded by the Zambezi Regional Council in a caretaker capacity.
Limbo who was appointed as the CEO of BVC in June this year says his office has a monumental task to clean up the mess created by the caretaker team.
“We inherited these problems and we are trying to correct them,” he stated.
He said the caretakers allocated some plots to more than one person and this created conflict, but he was positive this would be rectified before the end of the year.
Limbo also said that the BVC would soon table and adopt a council resolution that will give a timeframe of between six months to a year for the people granted plots on a lease basis to start building on their plots.
“We are definitely not going to sit with idle plots,” assured the CEO.
Because of the prevailing shortage of houses at Bukalo, staff members are said to be staying in mud-and-thatch houses, while council is trying to woo investors to construct proper brick houses.
In a related development, Limbo says despite the backlog for residential plots that stands at over a thousand he has appealed to people in need of land to apply, as the village council will also start looking at the aspect of affordability.
“I want to encourage people who want plots to apply even now,” he said.
Bukalo has 6000 inhabitants but is strategically located on the road to Ngoma next to Botswana and is also the gateway to the rich fishing camps of Muyako that boast highly fertile pieces of riverine land suitable for crop production.
Residential land hogged the limelight in recent months, which saw many landless people who felt prejudiced in the allocation of residential land staging ear-splitting demonstrations across the country.
Following wave upon wave of street protests over land, the government reluctantly capitulated to these demands, saying it would service 200 000 plots countrywide.