Residents of Berseba in the ||Kharas region protested the appointment of a handyman for the Berseba Village Council on Friday.
The successful candidate is not from Berseba, and residents say they were overlooked in the recruitment process.
They are demanding that the appointment be revoked and readvertised.
The spokesperson of the protesting group, George Vries, says the majority of Berseba residents are pensioners.
He says the few young people at the village are financially dependent on the pensioners.
Vries says a young person from the village should therefore have been appointed.
“We have to keep these people that we voted for accountable. And the decision they made here is not in the best interest of the local community,” he says.
Berseba Village Council chief executive officer Ivan Vries says the protesting group caused a lock-out and brought council operations to a standstil for the whole of Thursday.
He says 21 applicants were shortlisted, of which only six were invited to be interviewed for the position.
“However the outcome of the stand-off is now that the appointment will be reviewed over the next two weeks, and that the person who was appointed will not resume duty until the review has been completed.
“The review will be done in consultation with the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development.”
||Kharas governor Dawid Gertze, who met with the protesting group and village councillors, has expressed satisfaction with the outcome.
“We were able to come to an agreement, which I believe is mature in terms of the approach, and we also wants to validate the concerns raised in the letter from the community,” he says.
Berseba is home to about 2 000 people of which most are subsistence farmers.
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