By Frederick Philander TSES Arrears in electricity bills of more than N$35ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000 owed by the Ministry of Health and Social Services and the Namibian Police, is one of the big problems the village council at Tses is struggling with. This is the rather ironic situation presently at Tses where an electricity project was yesterday formally handed over to the village council by a private company. This became clear during a wide-ranging New Era interview yesterday with the mayor and village secretary at Tses. “We constantly have problems collecting the monthly electricity fees from the inhabitants themselves due to the fact that they cannot pay because of unemployment. This has been coming on for the past five years in which we have negotiated with Nampower to try and get the arrears written off in the hope of starting afresh,” said village council chairman, Petrus Witbooi. According to Witbooi, the local clinic and the Namibian Police operating in the village owe the council more than N$35ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000. “Due to non-payment by the Ministry of Health and Social Services, the village council were in the past forced to cut off the power at the clinic for up to three times per week, something detrimental to health service delivery to the inhabitants. The arrears at present total N$28ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000, and it does not look as if the account will be settled soon,” Witbooi said. The Namibian Police at the village owes the village council N$6ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000 for last month alone, an amount that could double by the end of this month unless the account is settled before then. “We will be forced to put pressure on the two State entities as well as the inhabitants to settle their accounts. Otherwise they leave us with no other alternative but to cut the electricity,” said village secretary, Ivan Vries. Vries further stated that the housing problem in the village remains a big concern. “Through the Build-Together programme, 17 home-owners have recently benefited from an allocated amount of N$608ÃÆ’Æ‘ÀÃ…ÃÆ”šÃ‚ 000 to build their own homes. The housing problem is made worse by the fact that many people are unemployed and pensioners,” said chairman Witbooi. Yesterday, Prime Minister Nahas Angula had a formal closed door meeting with various village councils in which it was expected that the deteriorating financial situation as well as regular electricity and water cut-offs were going to be discussed. It is generally known that a number of the village councils have been denied subsidies from the Ministry of Local Government and Housing due to the fact that these bodies have wrongfully used capital project funding for running costs such as payment of staff salaries.