Fire station becomes a white elephant

THE Otjomuise Fire Station which was built more than four years ago has turned into a white elephant because it has not been used for its intended purpose.

The cost of the fire station was supposed to be N$21 million but this figure has escalated ever since, because of the adjustments and corrections to the poor workmanship by the company originally contracted to do the job.

A source in the fire department said there were too many technical problems that needed to be rectified.

“I don’t know if the people overlooked some of the most important things like building a tarred road and having experienced building constructors to build the fire station. Time and again things must be rebuilt because it was not done the correct way. This fire station used up an additional N$12 million,” the source said.

The spokesperson of the City of Windhoek, Josua Amukugo, said that the fire station will open soon although they had experienced some technical problems.

“The station will hopefully open this week. The only thing that we have to install is the IT system,” Amukugo told The Namibian this week.

He declined to disclose how much the City of Windhoek had pumped into the fire station so far.

A source The Namibian spoke to said more than double the original budget of N$21 million has already been gobbled up by the fire station.

“The construction company should pay for its mistakes but the City also forked out a lot of money,” the source said.

Efforts to find out exactly how much went into the fire station from the Chief of Emergency Management Division Raymond Kapia also proved futile for the past two weeks. Both Amukugo and Kapia promised to return with the figures but never did so even though they were contacted repeatedly.

The Otjomuise fire station was due to open last year, to assist in fighting fires in the suburbs of Greenwell Matongo, Goreangab, Havana, 7de and 8ste Laan and Rocky Crest especially in informal settlements where incidents of shack fires are high.

At the moment it takes the fire brigade more than 10 minutes to get to those areas in the case of a fire, but with the new fire station being opened, the municipality hopes the time will be reduced to five minutes.

There are four fire stations in Windhoek including Otjomuise and three of these are operational. These are Maxuilili fire station, Diaz fire station in Suiderhof and the headquarters.

The municipality is planning to build one station in Avis and in the extended boundaries of Windhoek.

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