THE mayor of Outapi, Matheus Ndeshitila, has appealed to the town’s residents, businesses and Government institutions to keep their surroundings clean.
The mayor made the appeal during a community meeting held at the town on Wednesday.
Ndeshitila said the residents should keep their domestic animals such as dogs and chickens confined in their yards and not let them wander in the streets.He said no one would ‘want to live or invest in a dirty town’.Government buildings, such as the Outapi District Hospital and the David Sheehama Senior Secondary School in particular, were urged to keep their grounds clean and to cut the grass growing wildly on their properties. The mayor called on residents not to keep livestock or grow mahangu and maize within the town’s boundaries.He called on residents to pay their municipal accounts so that ‘this money can be reinvested back in the town’ to provide more services and better infrastructure.The community complained about blocked drains pushing sewage back into their home toilets. The mayor said the council was addressing the problem.He also promised Onimbu informal settlement residents that plans are afoot to connect their sewerage system to that of the main town. Complaints have been received that sewage dams constructed by the people themselves are overflowing and need the attention of the town council.The municipality presently has no money to embark on this project, which will cost millions of dollars. The council hopes that the Ministry of Regional and Local Government will assist it through its national sanitation programme to address the sewerage problem at the town and to extend the sewerage system to suburbs such as Onimbu.The council has so far spent N$480 000 on a storm-water master plan design, but still needs about N$120 million to implement this plan, Ndeshitila said.The residents also called on the municipality to repair streetlights that have not been working for months. The town council said streetlights are the responsibility of Nored and that it will take up the matter with the electricity provider.Problems experienced at the town’s taxi rank were raised and the council promised to move the rank to a place where it will be better regulated. According to Ananias Nashilongo, the municipality’s senior manager for administration, numerous requests to the central Government for funding of capital projects have fallen of deaf ears.The council needs to compensate people who have to move to make way for development, but does not have the N$21 million needed to pay them.
