Denver Isaacs
16 January 2008
opinion
OMITARA Village residents below pensioners' age should all be N$100 richer by the end of today, after the Basic Income Grant (BIG) Coalition yesterday started implementing what it hopes will be a significant tool in the country's fight against poverty.
The village is situated about 100 km east of Windhoek.
About 940 residents of the village are expected to benefit from the grant each month for the next two years.
The Omitara project comes after years of the coalition's failed lobbying to Government for the introduction of such a cash grant to all citizens countrywide.
Last year the coalition, which is made up of a number of civil society organisations, decided to go it alone, and identified Omitara as the site for a pilot project to test their theory of poverty reduction and economic development, after using much of last year to raise funds.
Yesterday marked the start of this pilot project.
"Today marks an historic occasion as we are taking a first concrete step towards redressing the debilitating levels of poverty that many Namibians still experience.
Omitara shares many of the social and economic problems of Namibian communities around the country," the coalition said in a statement announcing the first payouts yesterday.
A baseline study on the living conditions of Omitara villagers was done towards the end of last year, and the coalition says it will carry out follow-up studies every six months over the next two years to see what effect the grant has on living standards there.
"There's really been no influx of people since we started with registration (last year)," Herbert Jauch, coalition member and research head at the Labour Resource and Research Institute (LaRRI), told The Namibian yesterday.
"We might see some now after the payouts, but registration has been cut off," he said, adding that the possibility of people moving into the village now to benefit from residents' grants will be interesting to monitor.
The coalition went through three rounds of registration, he said, and only those individuals who missed all three rounds will not be eligible for the monthly grant.
The coalition said yesterday that it expected some delays during the first payouts due to a verification process of recipients.
Future payouts will be made using a sophisticated 'smart card' system similar to that used for Government's old-age pensions.
United Africa is responsible for facilitating the payouts.
Should the pilot project prove successful, the BIG Coalition intends to resume lobbying Government to implement the project countrywide with State funds.
The costs of the BIG would then be recovered though tax reform, the coalition envisions, whereby citizens earning above a certain amount will be forced to give this money back through their tax payments.
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