City Council blindly approves reports

THE Windhoek City Council, which oversees the City’s N$1,8 billion municipal budget, has been approving Management Committee (MC) reports for at least five years without really knowing what they contain.

City Mayor Matheus Shikongo finally halted the practice at the monthly council meeting on Monday.This followed after two opposition councillors, the DTA’s Ilme Schneider and the UDF’s Werner Claasen, refused to approve MC reports given to them only minutes before the meeting started. The MC consists of Swapo councillors only.Council was asked to approve two MC reports and one special management committee meeting report. However, the only information they received in advance were references to the reports in the agenda.For instance, all Council knew beforehand about Report No. MC 14/2009, was that it stemmed from a MC meeting on August 17 this year and that they were supposed to approve it with the exception of ‘Items PBS.1, BRB.2, BRB.3, BRB.4, BRB.5, BRB.6, BRB.9, BRB.10, HEW.1, PWI.1, PWI.2, REP.2’.’How can we approve it when we never get the documents?’ Claasen wanted to know.The Mayor agreed, saying it was not fair to expect councillors to be part of a decision when they’re not informed.City Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Niilo Taapopi, who is responsible for distributing the documents in time for councillors to study them, fumbled and said the issue is a ‘semi-administrative’ one.When he joined the City, the practice was that the reports were not distributed, Taapopi said.However, Swapo Councillor Linea Shaetonhodi came to the opposition’s rescue, saying that the issue was resolved when she still served on the MC by deciding that the reports should be distributed in time to all councillors. At this stage, MC Chairperson Elaine Trepper stepped in and said they stopped distributing the reports because they were leaked to the media before Council could take decisions on them at their monthly meetings.Mayor Shikongo didn’t regard this as a good enough excuse.He ruled that ‘all relevant information’ must be distributed by the CEO to all councillors in future.