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City of Windhoek dismayed over illegal land occupation

City of Windhoek dismayed over illegal land occupation

The Windhoek Municipality has expressed dismay with the recent illegal land occupation and has since requested that residents stop from participating in illegal activities and rather engage with the relevant offices at the municipally for guidance.

City of Windhoek, acting Chief Executive, Mujiwa Mayumbelo, stated that to provide immediate relief, they resolved to allow households with genuine needs for accommodation, including those on the waiting list, living outside unplanned informal settlements to enter informal settlements, where space for residential purposes is still available.

“Each request will be assessed on its own merits and the need must be proven to be genuine and once allowed, households will be issued with Certificates of Acknowledgement of Occupation,” he added.

He said for this to happen an application to that effect should be submitted to the Department of Housing, Property Management and Human Settlement, to simplify the application process a standard form exists.

“We urge people to use this route instead of resorting to illegal land occupation, as this will not be tolerated in Windhoek, plus the Municipality is working on implementing two important projects namely the pre-allocation of land in low-income areas and publication of the waiting list,” he explained.

Mayumbelo said with the pre-allocation of land, the position taken is that, to accelerate access to land in the informal settlement areas, land that has undergone initial planning stages will be pre-allocated to prospective purchaser, tenants or members of a saving group in line with the Development and Upgrading Policy.

“This is a breakthrough because it will allow people to be allocated land that is still undergoing development rather than wait until all processes are completed and to ensure that the allocation of land is transparent, we are working on polishing and then publishing the waiting list,” he emphasised.

He said to show their seriousness in assisting households in the informal settlement from the period of July 2020 to July 2021 they have surveyed a total of 31,864 houses, they have recorded 24,150 of survey forms in their database, they have recorded a total of 22,733 of Certificates of Recognition of Occupation and have issued 16,129 of these certificates.


 

About The Author

Mandisa Rasmeni

Mandisa Rasmeni has worked as reporter at the Economist for the past five years, first on the entertainment beat but now focussing more on community, social and health reporting. She is a born writer and she believes education is the greatest equalizer. She received her degree in Journalism at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) in June 2021. . She is the epitome of perseverance, having started as the newspaper's receptionist in 2013.