Gobabis – Enough Is Enough!
MUNICIPALITY of Gobabis please hear our outcry. We can’t afford to pay our municipal services anymore because of the high tariffs.
I fully agree that nothing is free and that the cost of everything is increasing everyday but the sky-rocketing tariffs of Gobabis municipality is way too much. Please see to the following serious problems.
We are still paying for accounts owed by our deceased relatives at the lawyers hired by the municipality of Gobabis. Our senior inhabitants are even without water because they can’t afford to pay the high tariffs. If you pay $500 for the municipal lawyers as a senior inhabitant then how will you be able to pay your current municipal account?
I think, though am not sure enough that 90 percent of the inhabitants are paying their accounts every month devotedly. I don’t even want to suggest that you should switch over all your services to prepaid because the property lease will then be much higher.
Everybody wants to own property (a plot). Why should the plots be auctioned and in the meantime it is only to the benefit of those ones with money because they can afford to buy it? The people in the informal settlements are without proper sanitation but they are the ones who are also making the crosses on the ballot papers.
Aren’t you concerned about the high crime rate in our town? Is the high unemployment rate not the reason for this? When will business investors invest in our town if almost half of the business property is owned by private individuals who don’t use it but rather rent it out at a very high cost which the businesspeople can’t afford?
To make things easier or to get rid of these kind of problems, why don’t you approach them and negotiate with them so that they can sell these properties to you so that you can rent them out to investors on an affordable basis?
If this doesn’t work why don’t you build business property yourself and lease it out to generate funds instead of only relying on money which we pay for the municipal services? Gobabis is the only town in the east, only town in the Omaheke region and the only town on the Trans-Kalahari highway. We are so privileged but yet we are the most affected by poverty and unemployment.
We just hear about TIPEEG [Targeted Intervention Programme for Employment and Economic Growth] in other regions and towns. Aren’t we also part of Namibia and aren’t we also eligible to benefit from it? Start to generate funds yourself like the Ongwediva Town Council and please lower the municipal tariffs. If not then let us dig our own boreholes right there in our own yards because Gobabis has plenty of water. All of us want to live comfortably and that’s why we are still trying our utmost best to pay our municipal accounts
By the way, municipal accounts aren’t the only expenses that we should pay. Please councillors, we have voted so that our voices can be heard - try to look back at the people who were standing behind your backs when you were campaigning.
Concerned inhabitant
Gobabis