Front Page News

Walvis Bay Urban constituency councillor Knowledge Ipinge yesterday welcomed President Hage Geingob’s decision to place the coastal town under tighter Covid-19 restrictions with immediate effect, saying it was a proactive and applaudable move by government. Geingob yesterday announced Walvis Bay will revert to stage one lockdown, meaning individuals will not be allowed to leave their homes except under strictly controlled circumstances, such as seeking medical care, food and medicine for seven days to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Schools will remain closed, while public gatherings should not exceed more than ten people. 

Fisheries minister Albert Kawana yesterday dismissed, as untrue, a newspaper article claiming the ministry has already issued fishing rights to the same old holders at the expense of new applicants. An angry Kawana said the article, which carried in a weekly newspaper, was “political propaganda that emitted elsewhere”.  “There is no truth in the article. The same newspaper wrote about me a few weeks back that I was chased out of Cabinet meeting. That was a lie and this again is blatant lies. 

The basic education ministry, which received the largest allocation of N $14.2 billion of the national budget, will spend about N$10.9 billion on personnel expenditure. 

A man, who was arrested last year for allegedly attempting to obstruct the course of justice in the ongoing investigations of the multi-million-dollar fisheries bribery case, has denied any wrongdoing, citing that he was merely doing his job. 

Police in Erongo region have cautioned women to consider their overall safety, especially when alone and seeking solitude in high-risk areas.
This comes in the wake of an incident in which a 29-year-old resident of Kuisebmund was brutally raped on Monday morning while praying in the dunes at Walvis Bay.

Finance minister Iipumbu Shiimi yesterday tabled a N$72.8 billion national budget, largely aimed at restarting a Namibian economy that – just as the rest of the world – has been brought to its knees by the Covid-19 pandemic.  

A five-month-old baby slept outside in a tent for the past two nights with its mother after their shack was razed to the ground on Sunday. 
They will spend more frigid nights outside, as the mother, employed as a cleaner, is unable to immediately rebuild the shack from her meagre income. Two other children of 40-year-old Rosalia Andjelu are temporarily accommodated by their neighbours.  

While economic analysts conceded that yesterday’s budget by finance minister Iipumbu Shiimi is aimed at reinvigorating a domestic economy ravaged by Covid-19, they emphasised the necessity to look beyond the financial and social effects of the pandemic and stressed the need to put more money into productive areas.  This is despite the fact that the prevalence of Covid-19 has brought about considerable uncertainty on the domestic economic outlook and has induced a significant downturn on economic activities and public revenue, with elevated public debt as a consequence.  

One of the men accused of conspiring with those implicated in the fisheries bribery scandal to divert N$75.6 million from the State-owned National Fishing Corporation of Namibia (Fishcor) for their benefit has approached the court for bail consideration. 

WALVIS BAY - Several Walvis Bay residents have been ordered to self-quarantine after a new case of coronavirus was recorded at the town, bringing the total of active Covid-19 cases in the Erongo region to two.