Otjiwarongo residents on Thursday staged a demonstration over the municipality’s alleged delays in writing off pensioners’ accumulated debt.
In their petition, the demonstrators claimed they were in possession of a written directive from the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development instructing the Otjiwarongo Municipality to compile a list of pensioners struggling to pay their rates and taxes.
“However, to our surprise, the municipality has excluded some pensioners qualifying for this government initiative,” the group says in its petition.
The group has also accused some local authority councillors of listing only pensioners who are their acquaintances and called on the ministry to intervene and extend the deadline, which was set for 31 August, to allow their grievances to be addressed.
They further demand that the municipality respond to their concerns by 8 September.
The petition was received by the chairperson of the municipality’s management committee, Namibia Kandume, who was accompanied by deputy mayor Sebetius Guiteb.
Kandume promised to submit the petition to the full council and provide a response by next Tuesday.
The Otjiwarongo Municipality in April indicated it was facing a sharp increase in outstanding rates and taxes, from N$65 million in January to nearly N$80 million by the end of March.
During presentations at two separate meetings, the municipality’s strategic executive for finance, Laudia Hamukwaya, said private residential properties at the time owed the municipality N$58.3 million, while pensioners in Orwetoveni owed more than N$11.3 million.
She said the local business community was in arrears by about N$6.4 million, while government ministries owed about N$3.7 million.
Hamukwaya said several measures, including water disconnections and the issuing of notices to defaulters, had failed to produce the desired results.
“Some of these accounts are as old as 20 years and keep on accumulating,” she said.
