Naloba accuses Alweendo of excluding Namibians in oil sector

The Namibia Local Business Association (Naloba) this week accused mines and energy minister Tom Alweendo of deliberately excluding Namibians from economic activities within the energy sector.

In a statement, the association highlighted Alweendo's remarks at the recently-concluded Namibia International Energy Conference in Windhoek where he reportedly said "Namibians should not feel entitled to oil and gas as natural resources, but we rather urge them to work hard and compete".

"This statement is not only cursing, but threatening, unpatriotic, embarrassing and insulting to the entire Namibian nation. Before anything, every Namibian is entitled to their natural resources, and the provisions are made very clear in the laws of the republic. The above statement made by a leader trusted by the nation to protect them and their natural resources has exposed and embarrassed the Namibian people to foreign investors,” Naloba said.

The association further appealed to Alweendo to publicly retract his statement and offer an apology to the Namibian nation, its president Erastus Shapumba said.

Never said that

According to Alweendo, Naloba got it all wrong. The minister denied ever saying Namibians should not feel entitled to the resources of their land.

"I never said that Namibians must not feel entitled to the discovered oil. What I said was that if our local content policy is going to work in the manner it's intended to, our local entrepreneurs need to guard against the attitude of entitlement; and there's a difference between being entitled and entitlement.

“My message was to encourage our entrepreneurs to prepare themselves [in such a manner] that they are ready to play their rightful part. We want to ensure that, as much as possible, goods and services needed by the nascent oil sector are provided by local businesses owned by Namibians," he explained.

He added that for this to happen, Namibian entrepreneurs need to ready themselves to play such a role effectively.

"Being Namibian should not be the only criteria - we need to equip ourselves with the requisite capabilities to deliver. If not, what's likely to happen is that Namibian companies will be fronted by international companies, rendering our local content policy worthless. I call upon us not to plan to fail.”