NEF joins NUNW in taking on municipality

THE City of Windhoek’s N$1,8 billion budget, marked by allowance and entertainment spending sprees and cuts in community investment, has drawn fire from the Namibian Employers’ Federation (NEF).

It yesterday pledged to support the National Union of Namibian Workers’ (NUNW) planned legal action to try and stop the City of Windhoek from implementing rate hikes of between 10 per cent and 15 per cent.
This rare show of solidarity between employers and the voice of the workers comes as the NUNW’s legal team prepares to scrutinise the municipal budget as part of their plan to seek an urgent interdict against the City’s 2009-10 budget.
‘The union wants to bring the action as soon as possible, preferably before July 15,’ NUNW President Alpheus Muheua told The Namibian yesterday afternoon.
The NEF issued a statement saying that the proposed rate increases, ‘coupled with the excessive non-essential spending and drastic reduction in expenditure to create jobs, are bordering on the criminal’.
Slamming the budget as ‘out of context in the current economic situation’, the NEF said the International Labour Organisation (ILO) expects employment levels to recover to that of last year only in 2012 or even 2014.
‘Around the world, countries and companies are racing to develop programmes and action to limit and alleviate the effects of the crisis.’ However, ‘it appears that for the Windhoek City Council, it is business as usual, spend money wherever possible, and the ‘man in the street’ will pay,’ the NEF said.
The federation said it supports the initiative by the NUNW in taking action to stop the proposed rate increases.
However, the NEF also called on the City Council to immediately stop the implementation of its current budget plans and to drastically cut unnecessary expenditure – like the approved N$25 000 entertainment budget for Mayor Matheus Shikongo and the N$140 000 entertainment budget for CEO Niilo Taapopi and his team of special executives.
The entertainment spending list, as revealed by The Namibian recently, adds up to at least N$1,4 million this year.
The NEF further called of the City of Windhoek to allocate money to ‘some of the social development programmes currently being ignored or token supported’.
In contrast to its entertainment budget and N$115 million tab for allowances, the Windhoek municipality will only spend N$80 000 to alleviate the plight of the city’s orphans and vulnerable children this year, while a meagre N$47 000 is geared towards the Katutura Old Age Home.
Budgets for extra industrial stalls and markets and poverty alleviation have been slashed to zero.
In addition, the NEF wants the City to emphasise job creation and development for everyone, ‘not just the employees of the City Council’.
‘They (the Municipality) do not see, or are comfortably and conveniently ignoring, what is going on around them,’ the NEF said.
jo-mare@namibian.com.na
Hikes to go ahead
THE City of Windhoek will impose hikes of 10 per cent on its basic water tariff and eight per cent on its water consumption tariff regardless of whether or not NamWater increases the bulk supply tariff they charge the municipality.
Residents will also have to pay more for water despite the municipality making a profit of nearly N$8,5 million on its water account last year.
In the 2009-10 budget documents, the City said it will need to increase both tariffs to help clear the deficit on its trading account. No details on the deficit are available in the budget.
Last year, the budget stated that the approved tariff increases of 10 per cent for both basic water and water consumption would not be implemented if NamWater didn’t push up the bulk supply tariff. On the instruction of Government, NamWater did not increase its tariff to the municipality, the parastatal confirmed.
At the time of going to press, it was unclear whether the municipality had increased water tariffs or not during the past years.