The steep cost of juggling low pay and spiralling debt

A senior state hospital cleaner who earns N$4 000 a month and cannot afford housing, transport or her children's needs put a human face on Namibia's civil servant debt crisis at a parliamentary public hearing in Windhoek on Friday.

Lydia Undjombala, who has worked her way up from cleaner to senior cleaner at Katutura State Hospital over years of service, told the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economy and Industry, Public Administration and Planning that her salary has never kept pace with basic living costs. "When I started as a cleaner, my salary was around N$2 300. Even with housing and transport allowances, it was about N$3 000," she said.

Despite promotions, little has changed. "It cannot afford a house. It cannot afford transport. It cannot cover all the needs of my children and family," she told the committee.

Undjombala stressed that public servants who take out cash loans do so not out of recklessness but because they are trapped, caught in a cycle where loan repayments leave them with little or no disposable income.

Some, she said, are left with only a few hundred dollars after deductions, making it nearly impossible to meet basic household expenses.

"People are suffering. Some leave their jobs because there is nothing left after deductions. They go back to the streets because they cannot survive," she said.

She described workers juggling school fees, elderly parents, transport costs and debt repayments on salaries that barely stretch to cover any of it.

Rising transport costs and the broader cost of living continue to erode already modest pay, she added.

Undjombala called on government to consider financial literacy programmes for low-income public servants, covering budgeting, saving and debt management.

Despite the pressure, she has found her own way to stretch what she earns: a backyard vegetable garden.

"I grow spinach in my backyard. When I knock off from work, I go and work in the garden so that I can bring something to the table for my family," she said.

Key issues under discussion during last week's hearing included the causes of high household debt among civil servants, the role of the deduction code system in over-indebtedness, and whether current legislation sufficiently guards against predatory lending and excessive micro-lender interest rates.

Committee chairperson Ipumbu Shiimi thanked Undjombala for her candour, saying her testimony would inform the committee's consideration of possible legislative and policy interventions.

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