2015-02-13Staff Report 2 SOME of us were raised in the traditional way and my parents have a very big house plus a mahangu field. Now that I am based on the land that belongs to the town council, I have to compromise my freedom as their land size is too small for me to have even a playground for my children, thus I cannot even sit outside because the borders of my yard are just one metre from the house wall, while in cities, children do not have contact with the soil as they are living in upstairs flats without any space, so children only walk on the sand when they go out sometimes. There are things involved in housing in Namibia that I fail to understand, that’s why I call them housing scams, because even the banks are failing to give us proper explanations. The payment period of a loan is 20 years and the installment is not cheap either – after 20 years one has been paying for about 10 houses. My question is, why can we not pay off a house over 10 years. Anyway who are the owners of those banks, because something is not right here? I know the value of the house increases but why 20 years of paying back the loan? A proper explanation is needed to convince me/us (I am sure we are many). The banks fail to make sure the houses clients are getting are worthy the payment period of the loan or half of it. I know we can get our own contractors but do I possess knowledge of how to construct modern houses? The design or plan nowadays is just copy and paste from a computer. I am not sure if the monitoring teams (evaluators) are engineers by profession or if they really know anything about construction, plus they fail to monitor the houses from elevatiion of the trenches and they only do the checks when they are called during claims. Inspectors from town councils are not mandated to monitor although they go there to check according to the town specifications, but most of them do not have technical capacity. In addition to that there are so many illegalities like bribes and so on. With such a long period the houses are constructed without what they call retention fees which can be holding back either 10% that the contractor can claim for 12 months, and defects during the period of retention the contractor can correct, but now it is a case of any defect after three months becomes your own baby. Which means getting a loan at any bank is at your own risk. The builders are most likely to be unskilled ones whereby the contractor wants to score because he/she knows they know nothing or less, hence they cannot demand high salaries. It does not mean we do not have well and qualified builders but contractors are hesitating to pay them, beside they do not care about the outcome – they only care about money. Namibia has put in place what we call NHE apparently affordable houses for lower income people, and who are the lower income people? How much are they earning to classify them lower? NHE according to my analysis has forgotten about their aims and objectives plus their mission, which is supposed to be to provide affordable houses to Namibians, but they change to provide lower quality houses, sometimes with one line of brick and the ugliest design ever to the middle class in Namibia, because the lower class person cannot afford a house which costs N$700 000. If people can do research about NHE and ask people if they want those houses or not then you will see the response. My opinion is that why can’t the NHE divert to become a body that services land in all towns, instead of constructing houses? Anon Eenhana 2015-02-13Staff Report 2
