Local authorities told to avail land for President's housing plan

Urban and rural development minister James Sankwasa says local authorities and regional councils have been instructed to urgently identify land and formalise informal settlements to help meet the housing target President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s ambitious plan to deliver 50 000 low-cost housing units over her five-year term.Despite doubts, Sankwasa called the target "achievable".Speaking at the 35th independence celebration at Mukwe constituency in Kavango East on Saturday, Sankwasa said: "This ministry has a direct responsibility for housing and sanitation. All regional councils, all local authority councils - if they had not planned that - they are under direct instruction to start planning to construct houses and to make land available." He stressed that providing land is not optional for local governments, describing it as their "first duty" to citizens."The first job of every local authority and regional council is to identify and provide land for housing. We have investors knocking, ready to build, but access to land remains a bottleneck. This must change," he said.Pressed by this reporter on whether the presidential housing target was realistic, Sankwasa responded: "It is very much achievable!"He added that an allocation system would be introduced next month to determine how many houses each local authority must build between now and March 2026, under the first phase of the programme.During her State of the Nation Address (Sona) in Windhoek last Thursday, Nandi-Ndaitwah announced that her administration would aim to construct 10 000 low-cost houses annually as part of a broader strategy to address urban housing shortages and formalise informal settlements.“There is a need for innovation to augment institutional capacities and decongest the bureaucratic bottlenecks that have for too long undermined the supply of urban land and housing,” the president said. She directed Sankwasa to establish a Special Land Delivery Task Force and to restructure the Township Board.CriticismHowever, Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) leader McHenry Venaani cautioned that the proposed housing target remained “woefully inadequate” given the scale of the national housing crisis.“There is a housing problem in this country. And I am agreeing with you that you want to promise 60 000 houses, which are awfully too few,” Venaani said during the same parliamentary session.He argued that government should prioritise freeing land ownership for urban dwellers who already have the means to build their own homes.“All those citizens living east and west of Windhoek’s informal areas do not own the land on which they live. Some of them are police officers, nurses. They can afford to build, but without land, they cannot. Free the land, and while you build 60 000 houses, 100 000 Namibians can build their own,” Venaani said.

Local authorities told to avail land for President's housing plan

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-01

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Local authorities told to avail land for President's housing plan

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Namibian Sun 2025-05-01

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