WINDHOEK - The Chief Executive Officer of the National Housing Enterprise (NHE), Vinson Hailulu, has called for a co-ordinated effort amongst all parties involved in government’s N$45 billion mass housing scheme in order to utilize all available resources effectively.

“We are supposed to have a common direction,” Hailulu said the players involved in the government’s single biggest development project since independence. The programme is designed to build at least 185 000 houses by 2030 to mitigate the current nation-wide backlog of 100 000 housing units. According to the NHE chief he has experienced “serious fragmentation” in dealing with various aspects of the massive project, which he said can have a significant impact on the broad economic development of Namibians. “Access to houses and property can be used as collateral or security for future loans at commercial banks,” said Hailulu, adding that this will go a long way in empowering Namibians, particularly low-income earners and those that do not currently have access to both housing and financing.

Meanwhile, the Government Institutions Pension Fund’s (GIPF’s) General Manager for Marketing and Corporate Communications, Elvis Nashilongo, confirmed that contractually, and perhaps operationally speaking, the GIPF Housing Loan Scheme is not linked to the government’s mass housing project. “Our intervention to provide housing loans is in line with property investment guidelines as per Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act. However, it is important to note that the Mass Housing Project is a national initiative that aims to address the shortage of housing in the country. In this context the ripple effect of our initiative has a direct positive impact on what the Mass Housing Project intends to achieve,” Nashilongo said. GIPF’s Housing Loan Scheme, which was created to close a funding gap in the local housing market, enables GIPF members to obtain a home loan, using the funded property to guarantee the loan while the member’s pension credit balance remains untouched.

The NHE is mandated to build low-cost houses for low-income and middle-income earners, through the revolutionary mass housing scheme, the biggest of its kind ever to be launched in Namibia.

The first phase of the mass housing scheme will target all urban centres within the 14 regions, while phase two will target all towns in all regions.

By Edgar Brandt