Month: July 2023

Kavango East Region Governor Bonny Wakudumo said the region’s leadership has resolved to ensure that the Divundu Village Council be upgraded to a Town Council by 2025.

Divundu was proclaimed a village council in 2015.

Wakudumo during his State of the Region Address (SORA) said the village council has attracted an investment of N.dollars 1.5 billion for the development of a blueberry farm by Blueberry Namibia, which is expected to develop a 254 hectares farm in phases in four years with plans to employ close to 700 locals.

Wakudumo also said the installation and commissioning of street lights for Divundu extension one has also been completed to the tune of N.dollars 1.3 million.

“An investment of N.dollars 31 million for the development of 90 housing units at Divundu’s extension 3 through a joint venture between Divundu Village Council and Mondjila projects will soon be realized,” the governor revealed.

While the leadership is working hard to ensure Divundu becomes a town council, it is also preparing to ensure that Ndiyona settlement becomes a village council by 2025.

It is with this reason that an amount of N.dollars 460 000 was budgeted by the Kavango East Regional Council for the development of an additional residential area at Ndiyona, he said.

Meanwhile the governor also highlighted challenging times the region was faced with such the incident where 16 people belonging to one household died last month due to alleged food poisoning.

Food poisoning, he stressed has become one of the scariest sporadic concerns in the region, and many lives are sadly getting lost as a result. “Every Namibian’s life is valuable, therefore, our deepest sympathy and empathy goes to the bereaved families and friends,” he noted.

Another concern that needs to be addressed, he said is that a number of people in Kavango East still remain stateless.

The Home Affairs and Immigration Ministry reported this year that Namibia is currently home to 141 048 undocumented and stateless persons.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency

The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN) has announced that it will lift the stand-still period for applications of broadcasting and telecommunications services licences, on 01 October this year.

CRAN on 01 October 2022, imposed a standstill period on the consideration of applications for broadcasting and telecommunications service licences to enable it to collect data from the market to assess whether the markets are saturated.

CRAN’s Executive for Communications and Consumer Relations Katrina Sikeni in a media statement on Tuesday said after various stakeholder consultations in 2021, CRAN was implored to conduct a market study for the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors, to determine the current market level of market competition, market saturation, and any existing barriers to entry.

“It was appropriate that CRAN maintain a stable market, in terms of market players, while conducting the study,” she said.

The study, Sikeni noted, was conducted based on a fixed data set, particularly the number of telecommunications and broadcasting service licensees currently in the market, and hence the standstill period.

“The data collection has been completed, and CRAN will begin accepting new applications,” she added.

She further stated, that it is paramount that CRAN continuously studies market dynamics to align the regulatory framework to best practices and emerging trends in regulation to ensure fair competition and facilitate investments into the sector.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency

Director of Committee Services in the National Assembly Kathleen-Joyce Nakutta said it is pertinent for members of parliament (MPs) to understand their roles in parliamentary standing committees to ensure decisions that benefit Namibians are effectively taken.

Nakutta was speaking to the media on the side lines of a workshop on the Validation of Rules for the Establishment, Functioning and Procedures of Committees of the National Assembly in Swakopmund on Tuesday.

According to Nakutta, there is currently a vacuum in members’ current roles in terms of who should decide on how standing committees should be composed and “we are currently discussing whether we should continue using the current standing rules that describe who the members of the standing rules and orders committees are.”

She said at this point, the rules are not fully composed, because the chairpersons of committees are not established yet.

Nakutta added that the issues are being discussed to ensure that there are no more similar challenges experienced when the 7th parliament occupied positions where it took a while to establish certain rules because there was no consensus.

Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) MP and Chief Whip Elma Dienda noted that the current standing rules are not practical as some issues have been left out.

“This applies to, for instance, the absence of a description of what a chief whip is and their duties and responsibilities, which is an issue that needs to be cleared.

During the case between parliament and LPM, some of these challenges such as the mandate of the speaker or MP and how they should be treated, came up during the arguments, so we need to go through these matters,” Dienda expressed.

LPM’s Bernadus Swartbooi and Henny Seibeb successfully appealed in the Supreme Court against their suspension from parliament, when their suspension was set aside and declared unlawful and of no effect.

This comes after the two MPs were suspended from parliament on 19 April 2021 after disruptive behaviour during the State of the Nation Address by President Hage Geingob on 15 April, causing their removal from the house.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency