Keetmanshoop
Regional and local authority councillors should serve all Namibians, says the Minister of Home Affairs and Immigration Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana.
Making this statement at Keetmanshoop during a consultative meeting with Swapo councillors last Saturday, Iivula-Ithana called on the councillors from different towns, villages and settlements to serve their people with respect and dedication irrespective of their political affiliations.
She said although they now hold positions of leadership on a party ticket, they should serve all Namibians and not Swapo members only, adding they have made themselves servants of the Namibian people and thus should act as such.
Iivula-Ithana is the chairperson of the Swapo national leaders assigned to //Karas Region.
“It doesn’t mean that you should serve Swapo members only, if you do that you are destroying the nation,” she stated.
She however urged the councillors to abide by the Swapo constitution and behave accordingly, stating that members that team up with opposition parties and undermine fellow comrades will not be tolerated.
She also spoke on corruption, stating that many a time the public accuse politicians of being corrupt and although this is not true in some cases, sometimes it’s true when leaders keep valuable information and share it with friends only, while plots are also allocated to friends and family members of politicians.
She encouraged the newly-elected councillors to pick up where the others left off, saying they are new but the institutions they head are not and should continue with service delivery.
“Let’s continue where the others left off, it’s no use coming here to illustrate the failures of our predecessors; pick the positives and run with them,” she stated.
Iivula-Ithana further encouraged the councillors to familiarise themselves with important national documents such as Vision 2030 and NDP4 so that they are informed to enable them to identify developmental plans they can bring closer to their people.
//Karas Swapo regional coordinator Matheus Mumbala at the same meeting encouraged the councillors to come up with practical projects that will benefit their people and not projects that are good on paper only but can’t be put into practice.
“Don’t come up with unnecessary projects that you can’t implement,” urged Mumbala.