By Catherine Sasman
WINDHOEK
At a meeting on a rainy and windswept day, Republican Party president Henk Mudge urged residents of the Kehemu suburb of Rundu to vote for the party for a change in their socio-economic lives.
Addressing a crowd of 600 a week ago in the northern town, Mudge said the Namibian Government is struggling to manage the country properly because it is “flooded with ill-trained officials who are incapable of doing their jobs”.
“They are officials, many of whom have clearly been appointed only because of their connections with the ruling party and its leaders. The SWAPO Government and its ministers seem to be only interested in feathering their own nests and have lost touch with reality on the ground,” charged Mudge.
He also took a swipe at the education and health sectors for their purported non-performance.
He said that there are too many “incapable” officials in the Ministry of Education, which results in poor administration, not only at the head office of the ministry, but in the regions as well.
“No effort is being made to see to it that proper discipline is being maintained at schools, causing even those dedicated teachers to lose interest,” Mudge criticized.
He went on to say that all teachers are not properly trained and school principals fail to accept their full responsibility to manage their schools properly.
He said there is great need for better supervision and guidance by inspectors and subject advisers, and that the Government should build more schools to employ more teachers and to allow Grade 10 and 12 failures to repeat classes to leave school with proper education.
Mudge also lambasted the fact that health infrastructure and services have been allowed to deteriorate “from an almost first world standard at independence to a miserable third world mess that it is today”.
“The fact is that most hospitals, clinics and health facilities have been allowed to deteriorate to a point of no return with the equipment unserviceable.
Those health facilities are not having proper bedding, nutritious food for patients and even basic medication, that one would expect these facilities to have in a developing country like Namibia,” he said.
Most embarrassing for the Government and its citizens, said Mudge, is the fact that the Ministry of Health and Social Services went so far as to “beg support and finances from public and private companies to save face”.
“It is amazing that the Government was prepared to take what can only be described as a humiliating step to restore order in a chaotic state of affairs. This is evidence of just another example of poor planning and administration by the people ill equipped to do the job,” Mudge said.