Otjinene Moves Along to Proclamation BOB KANDETU Thursday, September 4, 2014 - 08:00 Off the Desk Otjinene is destined to obtain Village Council Status and has already witnessed the election of the village councillors. Will this status herald the start of development for Otjinene or will it open a Pandora’s Box for problems to flow? Only time will tell. The Omaheke Regional Council has for years prepared a number of settlements for this status. As early as 2003, the Regional Council organised consultative workshops in Omaheke as a prelude to proclamation. One such drive was termed the Change Project of the Omaheke Regional Council, the council then organised a series of workshops through five settlements of Otjinene, Epukiro, Otjombinde, Aminuis and Korridor 13. These workshops were convened under a single slogan: The struggle we face and the steps we have to take. This process started with a two-day workshop in Otjinene, Governor Veendapi Mc Leod of Omaheke at the time, opened the workshop in high spirits. She said that the challenges facing Omaheke were enormous and the solutions can only be made possible by the people of Omaheke, with the assistance of the central government and other well-wishers, not the other way around. McLeod said that the council was determined to drive the decentralisation project of the government and it has therefore set itself three objectives in the initial phase of this development. These were: 1. Revisit the Omaheke Regional Council’s centres and settlements and enhance their capacity to make them self-sustaining through infrastructure development, revenue collection, and sustainable management of the resources so acquired. 2. Enhance the capacity of the region to be an economic powerhouse of Namibia, through encouraging industrial and agricultural development. 3. To kick-start the process with the implementation of the pilot titled “The Change Project of the Omaheke Regional Council”. This then was the initiative intended to spearhead what we are witnessing in Otjinene. The workshop’s programme ran for ten days over five settlements, from 27th February to 13th March 2003. First was Otjinene, then earmarked to be proclaimed in 2004. The change project consultations culminated into a set of recommendations that were by and large cross-cutting. Among them were: 1. The change project must be implemented and pursued vigorously, with the identified settlements taking centre stage in the process. 2. There was need for training of the prospective role players in the decentralisation drive, guided by skills auditing of the target groups prior to training and orientation. 3. That government must fairly distribute resources for development to the regions, villages and settlements. And to this end, budgeting and resource management cannot be over-stressed. I participated in this exercise as private consultant to the project: developed the conceptual framework and road map, drafted speeches and facilitated the workshops, as well as crafting the reports. My conclusion after all these was that the undertaking to organise consultative workshops was plausible and did confirm the fears of the council, namely that the centres and settlements were in a state of disrepair and their infrastructures had virtually collapsed and were unfit for human habitation and human utility. Schools were the hardest hit. Utility bills were not paid and this was not happening inadvertently. There was no commitment on the part of the communities to the facilities of the state in these settlements. Some of these settlements had no functioning settlement committees and those that had, lacked purpose. There was limited awareness and knowledge about the need to pay rates and taxes and how these contributed to the development of the respective centres. There was no conception in the minds of the residents, why they had to generate income when government can allocate money to run the centres. In the final analysis, the settlements and centres were not ready for proclamation as village councils and the exercise proved to be a little too early for Otjinene. Perhaps this explains why it had to take 10 years for Otjinene to come on board when the settlement was initially earmarked for 2004. My humble submission is that these settlements are riddled with challenges and there is need to orientate the role players, educate and train them in order that they run these places with knowledge and much more confidence. May I congratulate the Otjinene Village Councillors for their election to lead the people of the village, to link the residents with life sustaining resources and improved services. This will demand of them serious introspection. Victory parties will have to be short-lived and the task at hand must presume that development in Otjinene is running behind with ten years.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 07:21:57 +0000
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