Michael Liswaniso
19 September 2008
Opuwo — More than eight regional capital projects funded by Government for Regional Councils through the National Planning Commission (NPC) are still ongoing in the Kunene Region.
This according to the Deputy Director of Planning in the Kunene Regional Council, Fillipus Shilongo, is as a result of insufficient funding.
This came to light after the Regional Development Coordinating Committee (RDCC) met at Kamanjab on Wednesday.
Shilongo whose directorate is actively involved in the projects and chairs some meetings of the RDCC, indicated to New Era that a lot of project proposals from constituency level come through to the RDCC each year but final appraisal and approval is done by the NPC Secretariat where only a few projects are selected because of limited funding.
"We can budget for N$30 million but NPC can only approve N$5 million for us that is why some projects are ongoing for years because they are divided into phases," explained Shilongo.
Asked why RDCC cannot just concentrate on the completion of ongoing projects before attending to new ones, Shilongo said that some new projects that come in are crucial and at times need immediate intervention.
Shilongo singled out the building of toilets in Okangwati as a top priority.
"When cholera breaks out, we attend to an immediate need at hand," he said.
Regional stakeholder among them, heads of government ministries, heads of local authorities and other non-governmental organisations make up the RDCC.
Ongoing projects in the region include the construction of water, sewerage and electricity lines as well as the construction of ventilated improved pit latrines in some parts of the region.
Most of these projects are identified at grassroots level through respective 'small' village development committees and deliberated on at constituency level and finally sent to the RDCC for deliberation, identification and ranking.
A substantial number of the projects are directly brought in by government ministries.
Meanwhile, the RDCC, failed to submit a complete documentary submission on the National Development Plans III (NDP3) to the NPC Secretariat before the official deadline in August last year despite having had to work with !Nara Training Centre on the submission.
"failure to insert our regional contributions to the NDP3, affects the development projects and programmes in the Kunene Region for the next five years. This will indicate our failure as technocrats heading offices or organisations in the Kunene Region, so we should act now before it is too late," some members have said at previous meetings.
The region is plagued by widespread poverty, where a shocking 52 percent of households are rated as poor, of whom 41 percent are rated poor and 11 percent extremely poor, according to the official figures.
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