THE Municipality of Otjiwarongo has started profiling its informal settlements to better plan and upgrade the areas for their residents.
According to Adelheid Shilongo, the Otjiwarongo local authority’s public relations officer, the profiling is important because it will provide the municipality with crucial and accurate data on the informal settlements’ demographics, which in turn would enable better planning and the upgrading of the areas.
“The municipality expects to have collected data that will serve as a proper database that will enable it to start planning to formalise part of the informal areas to provide them with basic amenities,” Shilongo told The Namibian on Tuesday.
Basic amenities include potable water, sewer systems, electricity and ultimately security of land tenure for inhabitants.
Otjiwarongo has four legal informal settlements – Ombili, DRC, Tsaraxa-Aibes and Ombili New – and one illegal informal settlement, Eie Risiko.
Shilongo said the municipality’s community land information programme aims to focus on socio-economic development so that the local authority can do evidence-based planning.
She also said the process would focus on the collection of spatial information required for the upgrading and planning of informal habitats, and establishing household numbers and other basic indicators such as income levels.
The municipality has teamed up with the lands ministry, the Namibia Housing Action Group and the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia to carry out the programme.
Shilongo said the programme is an exercise that will mark the first stage of introducing the flexible land tenure system in line with the Flexible Land Tenure Act of 2012.
The programme team will be assisted by the Namibia Statistics Agency and the Namibia Housing Action Group, who will provide survey tools to ensure that the validity and accuracy of the data collected is credible and can be used in their planning process, Shilongo also said.
The programme started in June and will last for six months.
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