Cecilia Xavier

OPUWO – Kunene governor Marius Sheya last week met with regional stakeholders and heads of offices, ministries, and agencies to share his plans for 2023.

Sheya said town hall meetings in the seven constituencies aim to take government services to the community, giving the community a platform to air their grievances and ask questions to heads of institutions in the region, while also providing an opportunity for government officials to render services and have information sharing sessions on what type of services they offer.

According to him, the last time the region held a town hall meeting was in 2019, which Sheya said yielded some results.

“It is only through this exercise that when we go and engage the community directly, people get to either give their concerns, give suggestions, equally enquire about services and get to learn about products that we offer as the central government of the Republic of Namibia,” Sheya emphasised.

He acknowledged efforts made by officials with regard to service delivery, despite the challenges they face, and encouraged them to soldier on.

The governor noted, as declared by the President, this year is the ‘Year of Revival’, and it is a year to revisit the institutions’ plans that were halted due to various contributing factors. 

“We had plans in all our departments and those plans are good plans that were not achieved due to other contributing factors. Now in the ‘Year of Revival’, it is always good to change the plan a little bit to the current conditions where we find ourselves so that it does not stay stagnant. We need to revisit those plans and then we need to look at whether they are still applicable and how can they be applied to serve our people in the respective offices.” 

Sheya stated that Kunene should not always be the last in everything.

He expressed disappointment in the recent national grade 11 ordinary level and grade 12 Advanced Subsidiary level results, in which Kunene performed poorly compared to the previous years when Kunene performed exceptionally well. 

In his response, Joshua Shikongo, the inspector of education for the Epupa Circuit, noted that most of the time is spent in crisis management than monitoring the curriculum implementation.  

*Cecilia Xavier works for the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology in Opuwo.