GOBABIS – The Gobabis municipality is owed N$ 61 million for water and electricity by residents, private companies and government agencies.

This was revealed to Nampa by the town council’s spokesperson Frederick Ueitele in a recent interview. “The challenges of
non-payment of municipal accounts are mostly from some residents, government offices, agencies and some institutions from the private sector,” he indicated.

The municipality currently disconnects services, especially water and electricity, to residents who do not honour their
financial responsibility towards it.Ueitele said the council resolved some time ago to give preference to pensioners within the community by granting them lower tariffs than those paid by other residents in the town.

He also informed this agency that the Gobabis municipality does not have any contract with Redforce or any other debt-collecting agency.

Instead, he said, they are trying by all means to encourage residents in the town to pay their debts without being forced by a third party. “The municipality would like to make use of this opportunity to encourage our residents to honour their financial obligations by paying their water and electricity bills, and visiting the office to make arrangements for paying whenever there are any challenges for payments,” he added. The municipality also
started with a campaign of encouraging residents, especially those living in informal settlements, to migrate from the current water meters to pre-paid water meters, which, according to Ueitele, has a special price for pensioners.

“The municipal services provided to the informal settlements are all prepaid.
Thus, the problem is non-existent. The municipality gets pressure from NamPower and NamWater for outstanding
bills, which led the municipality to enter into payment plans for these respective companies not to disconnect these services at the town,” he emphasised.

- Nampa