By Reagan Malumo
KATIMA MULILO – Residents of Katima Mulilo, hungry for local news, rushed from shop to shop last week in search of a one-off publication that carried various stories on the town.
Funded by UNESCO, Katima Mulilo Community News ignited massive interest from locals who were interested in news from a regional and local perspective.
It carried news items on issues ranging from health to development and had headlines on how Chotto, an informal settlement, is “cursed” because of the number of prostitutes living there.
The news item compared the settlement to South Africa’s Hillbrow in Johannesburg where promiscuity is apparently the order of the day.
Other interesting stories concerned the open market at the town.
The paper was funded by UNESCO and produced by community media practitioners in the Caprivi Region with assistance from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
In March this year, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, in conjunction with UNESCO, held one-week training at Katima Mulilo, which brought together independent journalists as well as reporters from local community newspapers such as Generation Mirror, Zenith Newspaper, the Spectator magazine and the Caprivi Vision newspaper.
The training was aimed at sharpening the journalistic skills of local community reporters as well as addressing the plight of community newspapers in the region.
Meanwhile, the Deputy Director in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, who also acted as Chief Facilitator at the training, William Heuva, described the training as part of the ministry’s effort to strengthen community media in the country.
“We have identified the setting up of a fund to help community media as one of the priorities because some of the serious challenges faced by community media in the country are budgetary constraints,” noted Heuva.
He stressed that the community fund would help media houses and printing and advertising companies, and thus ensure democracy and maximum participation by Namibians in the political and social economic development of the country.
Lack of financial sponsorship, equipment and skills surfaced during the training as some of the major constraints that hamper the growth of community media in the Caprivi Region. It is against this backdrop that most of the participants are calling on the business community to assist them with sponsorship and advertising.
Certificates were also printed and are yet to be handed to all the participants who attended the training .