CoW still to decide on Khomasdal plots

 By Eliaser Ndeyanale
CITY of Windhoek is busy ad­judicating the offers received from applicants who intend to buy 399 plots situated in Khomasdal Extension 16, CoW public relations officer Lydia Amutenya has said.
The city council indicated last year that about 100 plots were earmarked for sale to the youth; 140 to those on the municipality’s housing waiting list, and 80 for council workers. At least 79 plots were to be reserved for the general public.
Municipality rules state that one should earn less than N$8 000 to be placed on its housing waiting list.
“The Khomasdal Extension 16 plots are still within the 120 days validity period. The city is currently busy adjudicating the offers received and will inform the public once council has pronounced itself,” said Amutenya.
Early October last year, the City of Windhoek mayor Muesee Kazapua stated then that the sale of the erven to applicants on the waiting list was being processed and would be an­nounced soon.
“Council is busy with the verifica­tion process, after which the names of the successful applicants will be announced,” Kazapua said then.
Also last year City of Windhoek corporate communications, market­ing, tourism and customer care of­ficer Joshua Amukugo said the city had 39 290 names on its waiting list, including about 21 000 who are wait­ing for residential plots at low-cost areas.
Amukugo said to date just over 8 460 low-cost land applicants have benefitted from the municipality, while about 18 243 applied through the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement
In recent years, Windhoek munici­pality was in the spotlight for dishing out land to councillors, their children and ‘special’ members of society. This saw the formation of the pressure group AR in 2014 by former Swapo Party Youth League spokesperson Job Amupanda and his fellow youth leaders George Kambala and Dimb­ulukeni Nauyoma calling on the city to allocate land to the youth or risk losing land to the youth. More than 14 000 applications were at the time submitted to the Windhoek munici­pality on the call of AR.
The youth gave the municipality until July 2015 to process the appli­cations.
According to an Institution Public Policy Research (IPPR) research, the current housing backlog in Wind­hoek is estimated to be over 80 000 houses. The majority of this housing backlog is in the city’s lowest income segment, those earning less than N$1 501 per month, where the backlog is 45 000 houses. This is closely fol­lowed by the category for those earn­ing between N$1 501 and N$4 600 a month, where the backlog is 30 000 houses.
In his State of the Nation address last year, President Hage Geingob said as part of his Harambee Prosper­ity Plan, Government plans to build 20 000 houses, service a minimum of 26 000 plots and build 50 000 rural toilets in the next four years with the aim of eliminating the bucket system entirely by 2017.