KEETMANSHOOP – Government has allocated N$6.4 billion for the implementation of 401 projects in various sectors in all 14 regions for the 2020/21 financial year, Works and Transport Minister John Mutorwa has said. 

Mutorwa said this during a stakeholder meeting held here at the Fonteintjie fish farm on Monday. 

He said it is clear that timely and prudent utilisation of the development budget to ensure infrastructural development will result in economic growth, job creation and progress. 

 “Sabotaging infrastructural development, on the other hand, is anti-development, anti-progress, retrogressive and therefore, criminal,” he stressed. 

 Mutorwa added that if the envisioned projects are properly and efficiently executed, they will have long and short-term positive impacts in all regions, adding that the development budget is what develops a country’s infrastructure. 

 The minister raised a question when the tenders for the 401 project will be advertised and awarded for the projects to be implemented as the budget was already signed off.

 “Are the action plans in place? When is the awarding of the tenders for the projects going to take place? These questions are to the various assigned officials of various ministries and agencies, including the public procurement board. Sometimes we are too slow in putting in place the ideas and policy of the government and at the end of the financial year we have nothing to show and the money is not utilised,” said Mutorwa. 

He added that Namibians are angry about incomplete government projects and their anger is not towards individuals who are entrusted with the responsibility to implement government projects but towards government as a whole.

The construction of the Fonteintjie fish farm project started in October 2014 and was supposed to be completed in February 2016. It is expected to cost the government over N$20 million. The project is however only 85% complete and the contractor has allegedly abandoned it.

According to Mutorwa, the meeting was held for the stakeholders to find out why the project has been abandoned and what the way forward is. 

 The meeting was attended by Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources Albert Kawana, //Kharas governor Aletha Fredericks, the contractor, consultants and various government officials.  -Nampa