OVER 30 residents of farm Cleveland outside Otjiwarongo in the Otjozondjupa region on Friday staged a peaceful demonstration to demand resettlement from government.
The group, which comprised mostly pensioners, marched to Otjozondjupa governor Otto Ipinge’s office, where they handed over a petition.
They said Farm Cleveland, where they carry out livestock farming activities, belongs to the Otjiwarongo municipality, which has leased a portion of it to the Cheetah Cement factory that intends to manufacture cement.
In their petition, the group said the municipality now wants them off the farm in order to pave the way for the operations and extractive activities of the factory.
“The biggest question is: where should we go with our livestock? It is for this reason that we staged a peaceful demonstration for our governor to do something for us,” said Gottlieb Geingob, the group’s spokesperson.
The farmers said their stay on the land was as per agreement between them and the late Otjozondjupa governor Rapama Kamehozu, who put them on the farm some 10 years ago.
The group suggested that the governor, as chairperson of the resettlement committee in the region, must resettle them on the two recently purchased government farms in the Okahandja district, based on the urgency of their situation.
The group has given Ipinge five working days to respond to their petition. The governor’s personal assistant, Sonia Iyambo, received the petition.
Site manager of Cheetah Cement, Immanuel Shilongo on Friday told Nampa that the blasting of rocks for the mining pit will officially start on 26 January in the presence of the police’s explosives unit.
“This blasting exercise uses explosives, and it is very dangerous,” he said.
Shilongo thus urged the farmers to vacate the land, something he claims they were supposed to have done already as per the notifications issued to them two years ago.
Spokesperson of the Otjiwarongo municipality, Adelheid Shilongom said several meetings with the 27 farmers on Cleveland have been conducted.
“For now, the place has become unsafe for them and their livestock. I urge them to leave the farm,” she said. According to Shilongo, all affected farmers entered the municipality’s farm illegally, despite their claims of an existing agreement with the governor’s office.
– Nampa
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