Omaheke unhappy about resettlement

OMAHEKE residents have expressed unhappiness about the resettlement programme in the region.

Various communal farmers aired their grievances during a meeting with a visiting delegation of the National Assembly last week.
The parliamentary delegation led by Deputy Speaker Doreen Sioka heard from John Muundjua that he had applied seven times to be resettled, but none of his applications was ever considered.
According to him, officials in the Ministry of Lands and Resettlement and the Resettlement Committee are only considering their families and friends, who are not vulnerable.
‘The process of resettlement in the Omaheke Region is becoming family business,’ he charged. Muundjua claimed that the people who are resettled do not have livestock and rent their farms to well-off farmers, charging a fee per head of cattle.
‘There is no productivity on the resettlement farms as those who are resettled are people without livestock to maintain those farms,’ he fumed.
Muundjua urged Lands Minister Alpheus !Naruseb to monitor the resettlement programme and to review the laws that govern the resettlement programme to adequately address the alleged nepotism.
Another communal farmer said people who could afford to buy farms through the Affirmative Action Loan Scheme are being resettled in this region. Mbutaa Murangi said some regional councillors, chief executive officers and directors of Government and private sector institutions were some of the beneficiaries from the resettlement programme.
In response, Sioka expressed disappointment with some of the regional heads of line ministries who failed to attend such meetings in order to give answers to some of these problems. Sioka promised the aggrieved communal farmers that their grievances would be forwarded to the relevant ministry.
Attempts by Nampa to get comment from the Lands and Resettlement Ministry proved futile.
The parliamentary delegation is on a weeklong visit to the Omaheke Region. – Nampa