By Mathias Haufiku

WINDHOEK - The Congress of Democrats (CoD) yesterday said, unskilled foreign workers should be banned from Namibia and that minerals and natural resources should be redistributed to Namibians.

The party’s president, Ben Ulenga, while introducing the newly elected CoD leaders of the party, made this call.

The occasion was also used to reveal its five-point plan, in which it lists education, health, land reform, nation building and economic development as the key pillars needed to improve the lives of Namibians.

“Ban the employment of foreign unskilled workers and allow mineral and natural resources redistribution,” said Ulenga.

He also emphasised the need to develop the economy and creation of jobs for those seated at “street corners and kambashu’s across the country.

“Education, which shall be truly free of charge, high quality and comprehensive from pre-primary to university shall be compulsory by law and within certain limitations shall be financed through the mobilisation of national resources including a possible education tax and shall include moral and social transformation,” he said.

Ulenga said health and welfare services should be based on a total radical approach aimed at transforming the health and welfare system.

“Introducing total and comprehensive access to all our citizens so that they can access health and medical facilities, be they private or state facilities.

""A comprehensive medical aid, medical insurance and pension system that will include not only government employees but also all private sector employees,” he said.

He said land reform and agricultural transformation must be based on the principles of restoration, restitution and reparations.

“This shall follow the approach of peaceful and orderly restoration of access to national land for our communities, and basically those currently historically expropriated of their land and agricultural resources which will have due consideration of the current property principles entrenched in the constitution,” Ulenga stated.

He said there is a need for a unified approach to land utilisation and agricultural practices like doing away with the current communal/commercial land dichotomy, restriction of excessive land ownership by single private individuals to the detriment of communities.

He also called for the introduction of an organised land utilisation and management system aimed at rehabilitating and conserving agricultural land.

Tribal land should also be done away with, so that all farmers can access grazing zones anywhere in the country, said Ulenga.

Ulenga also called for the reformation of the Veterans Act “to do away with political rewards and awards”.