Keetmanshoop owed over N$10m in land sales

Matheus Hamutenya Keetmanshoop-The Keetmanshoop Municipality is struggling to get N$10 million owed by individuals and institutions from land sales over the years. The municipality’s town planning officer, Gregorius Andries said the N$10 million is from the sale of over 50 residential and industrial erven sold since 2014. The amount includes accumulated interest because of those responsible not honouring their payments. He said the municipality will now ask the defaulters to make their full payments, failure which would result in the municipality taking back the land, and reselling it to other interested parties. “The municipality will inform individuals, businesses and government institutions within the following weeks via letters, to pay the outstanding amounts within a 30-day period, and if the period lapses without payment then the municipality will take back the land and resell it,” he said. Andries further explained that the failure by certain individuals and institutions to make payments for land sold to them, does not only mean the municipality is deprived of much-needed income, but it also delays other land developmental projects that are meant to benefit from the funds that were supposed to be paid. He said generally the municipality hugely depends on land sales as a source of income, and thus there is a need to make maximum profit from land sales in order to budget for other land delivery projects, and this he said cannot happen if huge amounts are owed to the municipality. “The slow pace of payment for land negatively affects the finances of the municipality, and if there are insufficient financial resources, how will the local authority be able to service land on time? Or complete the land delivery projects on time?” he stated. He added that land servicing is a huge task that requires time, capacity, skills and most importantly financial resources. He added that on average it costs about N$30 million to service 300 erven. He also informed New Era that the municipality would embark on various land-delivery projects this year, with the construction of houses 130 houses at Kronlein Extension 1 having already started, while about 570 erven will be serviced at Keetmanshoop Extension 3, 5 and 6.
2018-02-23 09:20:21 6 months ago