City to launch five-year plan

By Confidente Reporter
THE City of Wind­hoek is set to launch a new five-year plan in July, which will include a performance management system, as well as its strat­egies to alleviate the acute housing shortages in the capital.
City Chief Executive Of­ficer, Robert Kahimise, told Confidente this week that the municipality intends to construct its own low-cost houses, to ease the shortage of affordable homes.
The affordable housing initiatives are contained in the City’s new five-year strategic plan, which will be launched soon.
“Yes we are looking at constructing low-cost houses; this is included in our new strategic plan. We want to start with market indicators first, before we begin the construction of the houses and estab­lish how many houses we should construct,” Ka­himise said.
He added that the strate­gic plan will, among other issues, address the imple­mentation of the City’s performance management system.
“By the 1 July, our five-year turnaround strategy will be launched, and some of the matters covered include the City’s perfor­mance management sys­tem.”
According to media re­ports, the City of Windhoek has entered into a joint ven­ture to construct 80 low-cost houses in Khomasdal, as part of its plans to ease the housing backlog.
The problem of afforda­ble housing is not only a nightmare in Windhoek, but is also an issue country­wide.
According to statistics, Namibia currently has a national housing backlog of over 300 000 units, mostly in urban and peri-urban centres.
The Community Land Information Program (CLIP), carried out by the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia and the Namib­ia Housing Action Group, estimates that up to 25 per­cent of the Namibian popu­lation, which translates into 134 884 households or 541 119 people, live in informal settlements, without securi­ty of tenure.
Housing has been at the centre of controversy in the country since 2014, with the emergence of the Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement.
As part of a deal, signed with AR in 2015, govern­ment has pledged to service 200 000 plots countrywide.