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Namibia: Government to Audit Resettlement Scheme
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New Era (Windhoek)
25 April 2008
Posted to the web 25 April 2008
Wezi Tjaronda
Windhoek
The Ministry of Lands and Resettlement will this year conduct an audit of the resettlement scheme.
The audit, which forms part of the ministry's management plan will inform decision makers for them to come up with policy directives to normalise the resettlers' tenure and grant them post-settlement support.
"The ministry has realised that even if there are advantages of resettlement, it is time we made an assessment to know where we are going," Chrispin Matongela, the ministry's Public Relations Officer said.
He told New Era that the audit, whose groundwork was finalised and would be advertised soon would assess the social and physical conditions of the scheme. It will include getting information about the beneficiaries, their dependants, livestock, materials assets and infrastructural improvements that have taken place on the farms.
He said the audit would also look into the land use options on the farms to see whether the land was used as stipulated by the ministry.
"We have realised that may be the crucial element could be post-resettlement and not just land. We want to find out what else we can offer apart from giving them land and maintaining boreholes," he added.
The audit will be used as a benchmark for future investigations about the progress achieved in the settlements.
As of Tuesday, the ministry had resettled 1964 families on 224 farms. The ministry estimates that about 240000 people are still waiting to be resettled. This figure in future will also be subject for a study for the ministry to come up with new data.
In 12 years time (2020) the ministry's target is that 15 million hectares of agricultural land should have changed ownership.
The ministry has come under criticism for not offering post-resettlement support to resettled families, which has resulted in some farms being used for subsistence farming and squatting.
A recent study on the land use of three resettlement farms of Lievenberg, Drimiopsis and Du Plessis said, "It was clear that the resettlement beneficiaries need more than just the land to become productive and self-sufficient; they also need systematic, comprehensive and long-term support."
Not only has some of the farmland been degraded, but some families are worse off in terms of income than they were before they were resettled and have not been integrated into the mainstream economy.
Apart from post-resettlement support, the other challenges facing the resettlement process include vandalism of infrastructure on the farms, eviction of farm workers, illegal occupation of farmland and lack of uniform criteria in allocating land.
Matongela said since the process of acquiring and allocating the farmland took long, most property on the farms including generators were stolen and had to be replaced.
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Some people have also reported the Ministry of Lands to the Anti-Corruption Commission for not being allocated land. Matongela said some people thought they would be allocated land once they applied.
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