Capital Receives Millions to Improve Water, Sanitation Services

Lorato Khobetsi

29 April 2011

The major challenge faced by the City of Windhoek is the lack of adequate resources to provide basic services to low income areas, especially informal settlements which require major financial investment, this according to Elaine Trepper, mayor of Windhoek.

Trepper said this challenge is coupled with the fact that most of the informal settlers are not orderly settled and to formalise a township, people have to be relocated to provide access, roads and services corridors.

“Our investigations have shown that 50% of the people in the informal settlements will need to be relocated to allow servicing of the land and this is a challenge. We are however, excited about the effort being made by government to make financial resources available for the provision of basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity in the informal settlements,” she said at the monthly council meeting which was held on Wednesday.

According to the mayor, the Ministry of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development has made N$300 million available for water and sanitation projects in the informal settlements and the municipality is busy drawing up an action plan of priorities and project schedules for the funds made available over a period of three years.

“As a short term intervention, we are looking only at providing services to the under-serviced areas. A long term intervention which will require total township development, in terms of planning and surveying, engineering design, tendering and land servicing is also being drawn up,” said Trepper.

She further said that the long term cost estimates for the upgrading of the existing informal settlements stands at more than N$400 million whereby about 4,250 new erven would be serviced.

“This project will not only require a lot of money but will also take time to be accomplished. Our projections indicate that it will take about four years to complete this project. We therefore call upon central government to continue making financial resources available to ensure the completion of this project and its sustainability,” said Trepper.

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