2017-02-07Staff Report 2 Selma Ikela Windhoek-The City of Windhoek has given 28-day grace period to carwash owners who operate on privately owned residential properties or within business corridors of the city to make the necessary arrangements to ensure compliance with the municipal by-laws that regulate carwashes. A statement issued by City spokesperson Lydia Amutenya said the 28-day grace period applies from the date of the publication of the notice. Amutenya said owners of carwashes under this category should make the necessary and required structural adjustments to their operations to comply with municipal by-laws within the stipulated period, as the City will have no option but to take the necessary legal steps to ensure compliance. According to Amutenya, all affected owners of carwashes are urged to take the necessary steps to ensure that their businesses are compliant. “As for illegal carwashes operators within municipal road reserves, public parking areas and municipal open spaces, such operations must cease with immediate effect,” he warned. Amutenya added that the public should take notice that the municipality remains committed to ensuring continued economic growth and a healthy business climate and that the said formalisation of carwashes is key to ensuring that water in the city boundaries is used sustainably. “Formalised and compliant carwashes will be able to have used water channeled into the municipal sewerage system and hence there will be no run-offs that will pollute the environment and damage the road surface and [cause] drain blockage,” Amutenya explained. She further said that as part of Windhoek’s formalisation of most small-scale informal businesses in the city, the mushrooming of illegal carwashes remains a concern, compounded by the obstruction of traffic, damage to the road surface, an unhygienic environment, water wastage and drain blockages. 2017-02-07Staff Report 2
