Tenants in ‘living hell’ at Lüderitz compound

A ‘living hell’ is how residents of Lüderitz’s Benguela single quarters described conditions at the compound.

Residents of the crumbling and decaying compound, belonging to the Lüderitz Town Council, told The Namibian during a recent visit that no maintenance has taken place in a long time.Drains are overflowing, toilets in disrepair and the compound is being over-run with cockroaches. ‘It’s terrible,’ said long-term resident Dennis Hamukanda (42). ‘We pay for services, but these services are not rendered to us. We’re living in extremely risky and deplorably squalid conditions.’ Pointing to the unpainted walls and the leaky roof in his room, Hamukanda said tenants had to do minor repairs themselves. ‘They (Council) want us to pay rental fees, but they fail to maintain the infrastructure,’ he said angrily. According to Town Council reports, 100 tenants with their families (averaging three to five people) call the Benguela single quarters home.Other tenants complained of a lack of toilet facilities and the cockroach infestation at the compound. ‘Although I clean my apartment daily, I’m plagued by cockroaches while my room is filled by a constant unpleasant smell because of the overflowing drains,’ said Elizabeth Amakali (50).Between 300 and 400 people have to make use of a single toilet, while women are forced to go to the nearby bush to relieve themselves. Johanna Ndonga (35) said she frequently takes her four children to a local clinic with ‘coughing and tummy’ problems. She believes the illnesses are caused by the permanently overflowing drains.Tenants pay rental of between N$55 and N$70 for rooms at the compound built more than 30 years ago. People said they had complained numerous times to the Town Council about conditions at the compound, but their complaints have fallen on deaf ears. VANDALISM ANDDEMOLITIONLüderitz Town Council CEO Inge Ipinge agreed that the Benguela single quarters were ‘uninhabitable’, and admitted that the Town Council had stopped rendering services. Ipinge blamed tenants, saying ‘vandalism and failure by tenants to take ownership of the properties they are renting’ has forced the Council to turn its back on the compound.She said the Benguela single quarters compound was earmarked for demolition and that residents would be shifted to a low cost housing project, of 280 houses, in which Government, the European Union and the Town Council have invested almost N$15 million. ‘This tripatrite project is working towards the demolishing of the quarters,’ she said. Ipinge said the allocation of the first houses to 38 single quarter tenants will start this month.She could, however, not say when the Benguela compound would be demolished. Meanwhile, Benguela tenants said the low cost houses to which they would be moved were unaffordable for many and a local politician said an affordability assessment wasn’t done to determine whether Benguela residents would be able to afford the low cost houses. Countering this, Ipinge said the Town Council and Government have subsidised the cost of the houses.’We limited the cost to make these houses affordable,’ she said.She said Benguela tenants who could not afford the houses would be relocated to the Nautilus single quarters, which she described as being ‘habitable’.luqman@namibian.com.na