Housing policy in the works

A DRAFT White Paper on Housing is at an advanced stage, and will soon be presented to Cabinet for endorsement.

This was revealed yesterday by the Minister of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development, Jerry Ekandjo, at the inauguration of the newly appointed board of directors of the National Housing Enterprise (NHE). The Ministry, together with NHE, has been formulating the document to provide a policy and strategic framework for the housing sector.According to Ekandjo, the policy, which plans to position housing as the engine of Namibia’s economic growth and advocates for the adoption of a value chain in order to develop trades connected to housing, ‘will change the playing field in the housing industry and will bring relief to many of our citizens.’Describing the policy as being in line with Government’s Vision 2030 objectives, Ekandjo said the policy ‘promotes an integrated development approach from the housing point of view, especially within the context of Namibia’s rural development efforts in collaboration with other socio-economic sectors.’He also noted that through the policy, NHE’s scope would need to be broadened to make the parastatal increasingly effective in its work, which currently depends on the local authorities for the delivery of serviced land, by including in its mandate functions such as town planning, surveying, land servicing and construction.Other challenges faced by the NHE, he said, include ‘the unavailability and inaccessibility of credit facilities for housing purposes; rapid increases in house prices; escalating prices of building materials; the dependency on imported building materials; lack of serviced land; and finding appropriate alternative building technology, materials and methods to cut costs.’He said that if necessary, the Ministry would seek an amendment in the NHE Act to allow the enterprise to become more self-reliant in carrying out the functions involved in housing development.’The aim is to pursue the concept of ‘creating sustainable human settlements’ endowed with all social and economic ingredients necessary to sustain such communities,’ Ekandjo noted.Highlighting future initiatives that the NHE would pursue in line with the objectives of the White Paper on Housing, CEO Vincent Hailulu said that the enterprise will reactivate its currently dormant construction company, Eckerforte, to carry out land servicing and construction.He noted that the NHE had now reached critical mass in terms of land acquired – 6 000 plots across 25 local authorities – noting that the need to service this land justifies Eckerforte’s reactivation.’The biggest bottleneck has been the slow delivery of serviced land by the local authorities, which is negatively affecting the delivery of houses by NHE,’ Hailulu told The Namibian, adding that the reactivation of the company, hopefully within the next six months, would accelerate land and housing provision.The new board is Jason Nandago (Chairperson), Local and Regional Government Permanent Secretary Erastus Negonga, Muetulamba Shingenge-Haipinge, Farhad Nadimi and Raphael Mbala.Cabinet last month approved Mbala’s appointment and extended the term of office for the other board members until 2012.nangula@namibian.com.na