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Spending money we dont have

Word going around the block is that the land of the brave now has 14 regions and that is not all, two of these regions names have been changed, how exciting right?Maybe not so exciting to many Namibians.
Recently, President Hifikepunye Pohamba announced that the Kavango region will now be split into two regions, namely Kavango West and Kavango East. Furthermore, Caprivi region will henceforth be called Zambezi Region while the town of Lüderitz got the indigenous name !Nami≠Nüs Town.
Now I know many people are probably happy to get rid of the German colonial names and are rejoicing over the name changes, however let’s face it, all these changes come at a cost. Imagine all the thousands, maybe even millions of dollars that will be used to add these changes to the maps, signs and even school text books. And all this will be taxpayer’s money!
As expected, people have mixed feelings towards this process and have since aired their comments on social networks and various newspapers. Some residents of !Nami≠Nüs Town (Luderitz) are said to have written a petition against the name change saying that they were not informed about the name change of their town, whilst some communities in Kavango have actually embraced the idea. According to some, splitting Kavango region will mean more benefits to the people of the regions in terms of more infrastructure that will be built thus creating more jobs.
Some people also felt that renaming Luderitz and adding a clique sound to !Karas region is paying homage to the first indigenous people of the country, the San people. However, many people still feel that the changes will cause more confusion than pride and feel that removing the names of the German colonialists off the map will somehow confuse not only the nation but other people in different parts of the world especially those who cannot pronounce the clique sounds.
I honestly don’t understand our government at all; do we really need to spend money we don’t have? And even if we do, shouldn’t government rather spend it on things that concern us at this moment, especially considering the current drought facing our country. Like one citizen put it, “I think the timing for these decisions is bad, there’s a drought and various government workers are going on strike to increase their salaries,just imagine the expenses of changing the legislation,
textbooks, maps , international documents, treaties (agreements) etc. it’s a lot of money which could be used to improve the lives of people. I think we were getting on fine, e.g no civil wars and free education for government primary schools.”
But I guess government can afford to pay for the costs, in fact the President was quoted saying, “To those who complain that democracy is expensive, I say to them they should try chaos, anarchy, instability and disharmony. Very soon they will realise that democracy no matter how expensive is by far the better option.”
I rest my case!

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