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Independent Namib
Tel: 064 200497
Like a newspaper, only better!
Diamond Arrow Winner Best Community Newspaper 2014
Issue 153 - Thurs, 18 June 2015 to Wed, 24 June 2015
Mr. Otis Finck opened the dialogue amongst concerned Narraville community members at Tuesday evening's resident's meeting.
The campaign to discredit the Walvis Bay energy project is both short-sighted and without merit. Hennie Steyn, managing director of the project developer firm, Xaris Energy on the gas power plant project in Walvis Bay See Page 6
See Page 3
Bank of Namibia increases repo rate by 25 basis points
See Page 4
Father's Day Fun!
Check out what one local dad has done for his kids this Father's Day, and see the last chance to enter our Coolest Dad Competition! - Page 12
Narraville community takes charge of its destiny Gareth Amos Following on the back of a recent series of meetings held by the Municipality in the key areas of Narraville, Town and Kuisebmond to table the proposed budget for the next fiscal year, residents of Narraville have not let the opportunity to voice their opinion on the budget elude the community. A community meeting was called for by Narraville resident and prominent business personality Mr. Ivan Marshall on Tuesday this week to discuss the budget and to get input from the community in order to meet the municipality’s deadline for feedback which expires on Friday 19th June. Although the meeting was not as well attended as the organisers had hoped, valuable contributions were made by the community which highlight that the proposed budget for Narraville falls horribly short and neglects to
allocate funding to items deemed vital by the community. Mr. Otis Finck, well known journalist and stalwart of the community, opened dialogue by diligently highlighting the proposed line items of the budget and explaining them in a little more detail so that the attendees were fully versed on the specifics of the budget, before Mr. Marshall led the floor in a structured though open dialogue on the key points. At the outset of the discussion, the mood clearly indicated two things above all: that the budget simply was not enough and that many items of the budget have been promised year after year without any tangible results, which attributed to an atmosphere of despondency. OLD AGE HOME Off the bat, the long running back and forth of promises relating to the Narraville Clinic and Old Age Home was once again upon the
already impatient residents. “The saga has been going on for years now and what do we see about the old age home? … nothing,” said one resident. Another sticking point is the land which has been made available for the Old Age home, with almost all of the community agreeing that there has been significant short-sightedness in the allocation of land for the home. The general consensus being that it is way too small and offers no scope for growth. “If you look at old age homes anywhere, there is always a clinic and some kind of health care facility for the elderly connected Continued on Page 3
No mass action for Walvis Bay?
AR - We will negotiate! Staff Reporter Following a recent public gathering in Walvis Bay by concerned citizens and much continued dialogue between the organiser of the meeting and the AR leadership, the AR community leader for Walvis Bay, Mr. Knowledge Iipinge, has officially confirmed in a statement to the Namib Independent that the group is willing to discuss alternate, short and medium term solutions for the landless youth issue, which in all likelihood will mitigate any mass land action that has been planned for 31 July 2015. This is the first such
public statement from the AR leadership that does not carry with it the caveat that in order to move forward amicably on the issue, that the local authority must supply affordable land to the 9500 local applicants by the deadline. “On the very day that the AR applications were filed at the Walvis Bay Municipality, we discussed the possibility of setting up a meeting with the Municipality regarding the applications and the process that was to follow after the submission. However, until last week we had not even received acknowledgement of Continued on Page 3