John Muyamba
RUNDU – The Ministry of Environment and Tourism (MET) is closing down its Ndiyona settlement sub-office in Ndiyona Constituency in Kavango East and the three staff members at the office will be relocated to Buffalo core area in the Bwabwata (West) National Park in Mukwe, Kavango East.
The office mainly dealt with national parks and wildlife management.
According to MET’s deputy director for the north-east regions, Apollinaris Kanying, the Ndiyona office was not worth keeping open as there are only two staff, as the third staff member is soon going on retirement and the supervision aspect was also challenging, amongst other administrative issues.
The office was being rented from the Gciriku Traditional Authority for N$750 per month and MET says the closing down is to cut costs but for Ndiyona it means they will be served from offices 100 km away, the Rundu office and the Buffalo office, where the staff are being migrated so that if there is a case of human-wildlife conflict, officials will be dispatched from there. “We got approval from the head office to close the station but it does not mean we are closing our services, we are moving the staff to Buffalo to cut costs and improve on service delivery because we have a new station at Buffalo where the staff will now be operating from,” Kanyinga said.
The office served Ndiyona, Mukwe, Ndonga Linena and Mashare constituencies.
The MET office has for the past 20 years been renting accommodation from the Gciriku tribal office at Ndiyona settlement.