City admits land bottleneck

The City of Windhoek yesterday admitted that there a number of people living on its land illegally.

The illegal occupancy of land in particular rife in informal settlement.The Windhoek municipality said that there was also a bottleneck with land delivery in the capital.Scheifert Shigwedha, the spokesperson of the City of Windhoek, said: ‘The City is aware of of a dire need to provide serviced land to all.’Shigwedha told people who illegally build shacks on any municipal land to immediately stop doing so ‘and rather follow appropriate procedures in obtaining land’.The spokesperson said they were working on the problem. ‘There are direct interventions that are making inroads in order to improve the pace of delivering serviced land and are complementing [the] City’s gradual budgetary project provisions.’Referring to about 100 people who started grabbing land in Otjomuise’s Agste Laan informal settlement this week, he said: ‘There has been a consistent emerging trend where communities at the grassroots level tend to attempt to take advantage during major seasonal and/ or political events to illegally invade and occupy land.’Shigwedha lashed out at this, saying: ‘This behaviour is inappropriate and further slows down the process of adequately demarcating the land for urban development.’The area opposite the clinic in Otjomuise that the 100 people started clearing is currently zoned ‘undetermined’, with the aim of zoning it for business or office use.He said the land is not suitable for residential use as it is too close to a main road. ‘The city does not encourage development of residential erven along main arterial roads due to heavy traffic use – thus not safe for residential dwelling.’There is a Targeted Intervention Programme for Employment and Economic Growth (Tipeeg) intervention under way in Otjomuise through which 1 000 residential erven are being developed at a cost of N$110 million, he said. According to him, the provision of municipal services on these erven is expected to be concluded by the middle of next year. ‘Delivering serviced land is a lengthy, delicate and expensive process. The City therefore urges the public to be patient while it continues proactively find meaningful and productive solutions that will aid in speeding up the delivery of serviced land.’The group who started grabbing land in Otjomuise this week claimed they are tired of waiting for the City of Windhoek to allocate them land legally. ‘Why must there be open land and people are suffering?’ one wanted to know.Another said that it was the responsibility of the City of Windhoek to make the erven liveable for them.Khomasdal North regional councillor Margaret Mensah-Williams on Wednesday said that allocating erven is not her baby. ‘It’s not me who allocates erven. When I asked about regional and constituency development in Windhoek, I was told the City of Windhoek does it. So let the City of Windhoek talk.’She urged people to be patient and wait until erven are allocated to them.