RUNDU – The Governor of Kavango West and businesspeople in the region met this week to discuss how government can work with local business in accelerating service delivery in the region. Sirkka Ausiku, the governor, was particularly interested to know the services and products offered by institutions and businesses present in the region. “I have invited the institutions that have the means to help us develop this new region, that is the reason why we are having this meeting,” Ausiku said.
The meeting, held this week at the town of Nkurenkuru, was attended by the community, local businesspeople, financial institutions, all government institutions and state-owned enterprises with offices in the region such as the Development Bank of Namibia, SME Bank, Agri-Bank, MTC and the National Tender Board of Namibia as well as representatives of various political parties. “I invited [other] political parties because this is not a party meeting and I was appointed to serve all Namibians not only my political party,” Ausiku explained.
The core message was what do these institutions offer and how best can Kavango West people access such services, with Ausiku reminding the meeting of how often people in the region resort to making demands for services on radio while the institutions that offer those services are present in the region.
This is not the first time the governor organised such a meeting. In August she invited different ministries to explain to the community about their programmes and how communities can access services as well as how the different ministries can assist in developing the newly formed region.
Ausiku reminded that as governor she represents the central government and with the duty to coordinate authority of all developmental programmes and projects implementation in the region. “My task is to ensure that programmes and projects in the region are fully implemented within line ministries budgetary provisions,” she said.
She also advised institutions to present statistics of how many businesspeople from the region are benefiting from their institutions, she also urged the Tender Board to not only advertise tenders in the newspapers but to also send advertisements and notices through to the governor’s office, which can spread the available tenders to the business community. “Sometimes we don’t get newspapers in Nkurenkuru and that makes our businesspeople to miss out, we want people to create employment for others and so our businesspeople need to access these various services in order to get tenders and create jobs for others,” Governor said, adding that the business community in Kavango West also needs to benefit from tenders and thus require training on how to tender successfully. “We want to see our local people acquire tenders that they can provide jobs for other people in the region to eliminate poverty amongst our people,” Ausiku said.
Kavango West is one of the fourteen regions of Namibia and its capital is Nkurenkuru, the region was created in 2013 when the Kavango Region was split into Kavango East and Kavango West. Politically the region is subdivided into eight electoral constituencies: Kapako, Mankumpi, Mpungu, Musese, Ncamangoro, Ncuncuni, Nkurenkuru, and Tondoro.