Stone-throwing protesters pepper-sprayed at Maltahöhe

STONE-THROWING, pepper spray, a forced lockout, Police cordoning, heckling and a petition shook the sleepy rural village of Maltahöhe yesterday.

Placard carrying residents, chanting ‘Enough is enough’, staged a morning protest march to municipal offices to hand over a petition calling for the immediate removal of the Village Council and top management of the southern town over financial irregularities and exorbitant municipal tariffs.The situation erupted after the protesters handed the petition to Maltahöhe CEO Tirani Kandukira and stormed the council building, through a Police cordon, to padlock the building’s main entrance. Police were forced to use pepper spray to disperse the crowd. During the scuffle, Village Council vice chairperson Hans Josephs struck and slightly injured an elderly woman with his car while trying to remove the vehicle from the path of stone-throwing protesters. Trying to calm the situation, Village CEO Tirani Kandukira said the Maltahöhe Council would respond to the petition within a week. ‘We need time, because some of the irregularities mentioned in the petition are under Anti-Corruption Commission investigation,’ he said. Frustrated residents responded with: ‘We don’t need to hear, can’t you see that the community doesn’t want you. We came to close the office.’And one resident shouted: ‘After 19 years of independence we still have no electricity and no running water. Come election time we will not vote for the current Government.’ The protestors were led by Adam Baisako and Daniel Schmidt, who recently founded the Democratic Party of Namibia (DPN) at the town.In the petition residents allege money earmarked for development projects had gone missing, while tender irregularities were the order of the day at the village. In addition, protesters claimed the Village Council was fleecing them by charging exorbitant tariffs for basic services. Residents claimed that tariffs were upped by as much as 1 000 per cent in 2008, despite clear directives from the Local Government Ministry that all tariffs be raised in line with the inflation rate or tariff increases by bulk suppliers. In an interview after the protest, Village Council chairperson Aermgarda /Gawases said the community had directly petitioned the line ministry over the tariff issue and the Council could not comment until the Local Government Ministry had briefed them on what to do. /Gawases acknowledged that Council had rubber-stamped the tariff increases because residents had been undercharged for years.’The community also agreed on the tariff increases when Council at a community meeting explained the scenario in which Council finds itself, because residents were charged far below what the bulk utilities were charging Council,’ she said. According to /Gawases, the undercharging had led on several occasions to the cutting-off of water and electricity to the village because of default payments.On poor service delivery, /Gawases said Council was trying to do as much as possible with the available resources to render effective services at the village. ‘Previously money was not budgeted for the informal settlement, but since last year we began to make provision in the budget for the informal settlement to boost socio-economic development,’ /Gawases said. In a separate interview, Tirani Kandukira said he was in the process of replying to Local Government Ministry queries related to the exorbitant tariff increases.With regard to the host of irregularities mentioned in the petition, /Gawases said most of the issues were being investigated by the Anti-Corruption Commission.’Unfortunately Council cannot comment on sub-judice matters,’ she said.