Urban and rural development minister Erastus Uutoni said if the Oniipa Town Council is not cooperating, it will soon face serious sanitation problems.
“Councilors and officials should stop fighting each other. They should work together in peace. They are the reason people are not getting land. Stop it!” stressed Uutoni.
He said they only have few years before they leave these offices, as they would not serve forever.
“If leaders keep on fighting each other, development will not take place,” he added.
Uutoni made these remarks during the handover of plots to the beneficiaries of Oniipa town through joint efforts by MTC, Development Workshop Namibia and the town council.
“Currently and over the past years, the demand for land and housing in urban areas has been increasing. This is not because nothing is being done to minimise it, but because each and every year, the population is increasing, whereby more and more residents are demanding housing,” he explained.
He stated that the housing backlog in Namibia is one of the country’s biggest development challenges and government, through the ministry of urban and rural development, has redoubled its efforts to provide access to housing for all Namibian citizens.
MTC managing director Licky Erastus said at the same occasion that MTC last year embarked on a three-year implementation partnership with Development Workshop Namibia (DWN) in a programme labelled the MTC Land Delivery Project.
“The objective was to partner with local authorities willing to avail land at reduced cost to assist low-income households to obtain land in municipal districts by providing low-cost serviced plots in selected towns in Namibia at an affordable price,” he stated.
As of 2018, MTC has been actively supporting housing programmes when they invested in the Buy-A-Brick Project Initiative through the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN) with an amount of N$800 000.
“This was followed shortly with another capital injection of N$10 million by MTC and Huawei in the same year. In 2019, we successfully hosted the MTC Knockout Project, which focused on addressing homelessness”, Erastus added.
He said with this project, MTC, in partnership with other corporates, managed to raise N$1 million.
Again, these funds were distributed to the SDFN to build at least 25 low-cost houses; 10 houses in Tsumkwe in the Otjozondjupa region, eight in Gochas in the //Kharas region, and seven at Gibeon in Hardap.
“MTC has committed N$2 million to aid DWN and selected local authorities to deliver 1 585 low-cost land for housing in four towns, namely Oniipa - 113 plots, Okakarara (707), Stampriet (282) and Otjiwarongo (483),” he continued.
vkaapanda@nepc.com.na