Leonard Amadhila
19 October 2004
Windhoek — A CITY Councillor has appealed to women to stand up for their political and economic rights and to get involved in developmental activities in their respective communities.
At the opening of the Tobias Hainyeko Consti-tuency office over the week-end, Ellaine Trepper, the Deputy Mayor of the City of Windhoek, said development could not be achieved if women were left behind.
She said she wanted to see more women play a visible role in bringing about de-velop-ment, adding that the constituency office was built to benefit both sexes.
She further called on men to stop calling women "house--wives" saying that the usage of such term or words under-mined the status of women.
Trepper stressed that wo-men were not married to houses to be called house-wives, but were married to their husbands and thus they should be called men's wives.
"The word 'housewife' should disappear from our midst because it is an insult to us women to be called house-wives," she argued.
She said women have done a lot for both men and their fellow women as they partici-pated in the war of liberation. They also actively partici-pated in the reconstruction of the country over the past 14 years of independence.
She said women should stand up and actively take part in politics and must campaign hard so that 30 per cent of women parliamentary representation is secured.
In her address, the Deputy Chairperson of the National Council, Margaret Mensah-Williams, said Namibia adopted the decentralisation process with the overall aim of ensuring economic, cul-tural and social development. Through this policy, the people at the grass-roots level could be accorded the oppor-tunity to take part in decision-making and extend democ-racy as a right based on national ideals and values.
Mensah-Williams noted that the decentralisation policy was defined in simple terms of bringing the Govern-ment closer to the people, and the constituency office was one of the developmental milestones.
She said decentralisation has two phases, of delegation and devolution within the framework of a unitary state. According to Williams, this implies that the Central Government would retain the responsibility to develop policies and legislation while the implementation thereof is to be phased in systematically through regional council offices.
The office would be used as community property where they could convene their meeting and events including church services and other community affairs.
She added that the key objectives concerning decen-tra-lisation were to extend, enhance and guarantee par-tici-patory democracy in order to achieve development.
The Tobias Hainyeko Con-stituency caters for both formal and informal settlers and has many developmental facilities such as schools, churches, clinics and commu-nity centres and police stations.
The constituency formerly known as Hakahana was recently renamed because "the name Hakahana was the name of the colonial regime when they removed black workers from the hostel to the informal settlement called Hakahana", she said.
The constituency is now divided into the Tobias Hainyeko and Moses Garoeb constituencies. More than 60 000 inhabitants live in these two settlements.
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