John Muyamba
Nkurenkuru-Kavango West Regional Governor Sirkka Ausiku will from today host a two-day stakeholders’ meeting with government ministries and agencies in Nkurenkuru with the intention to gauge sentiment in terms of project implementation, service delivery and development in Kavango West for the financial year 2017/2018.
Since taking office in 2014, Ausiku has made it her business to meet all government offices and agencies at stakeholders’ meetings to track developmental activities and progress in the region in order to strengthen the good working relationship with all ministries, agencies and stakeholders, including investors.
“Yes, as a region we will have our final stakeholders’ meeting where we expect all O/M/As (offices/ministries/agencies) operating in our region to brief us on how they implement their activities, programmes and projects as per budget allocation for the 2017/18 financial year,” Ausiku said.
“As I highlighted in my state of the region address last year, our development budget was reduced from N$346.2 million in 2016/2017 to N$157.3 million. As a new region that was a huge setback to our projects that were earmarked to start during the 2017/18 financial year,” she added.
According to Ausiku, Kavango West expects that all offices, ministries and agencies should inform the public on the implementation of all their activities, programmes and projects and not only about capital projects in relation to their operational and developmental budget allocations.
Moreover, she wants to highlight the economic advancement, infrastructure development, human capital development and social progression of the community of the region. “As a governor, one of my responsibilities is to monitor the activities of government programmes in the region, so this stakeholders’ meeting is part of my tools to monitor how the programmes are being implemented, and since the community is also invited to this meeting it gives the chance to ask these government officials questions directly,” she noted.
When asked what are the current government projects in Kavango West, Ausiku said this would be made clear after the two-day meeting.