Kunene officials under fire for snubbing MPs

Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) lawmaker Lillian Lutuhezi has criticised the Kunene Regional Council for failing to make senior officials available during a week-long parliamentary oversight visit in August.The council’s chief regional officer, George Kamseb, apologised yesterday, saying it was “not our intention” that the committee felt humiliated.Lutuhezi raised the concerns during a public hearing of the National Assembly's standing committee on poverty eradication, labour and industrial relations on Monday.Lutuhezi said the committee spent an entire week in Kunene without meeting the council's management, despite officials allegedly receiving notice of the visit two months earlier.“When you started apologising about the management being here, I thought you’d start from what transpired that week in Kunene," she said during the hearing."We spent a week in Kunene without seeing the management. And for me, that was the worst experience,” Lutuhezi stressed.Yesterday's hearing heard from officials from the Kunene and Kavango East regional councils, the Social Security Commission and the gender equality and child welfare ministry.Lutuhezi said an official identified as 'Charles' was left to answer questions from the committee during their Kunene visit, although he was not responsible for the matters being investigated.“If I can remember, his name was Charles, if I’m not mistaken, the one who was answering questions, and he had no clue of what he was talking about, because he was not in charge,” she said.Projects difficult to traceLutuhezi highlighted the committee's concern around the council's monitoring of beneficiaries who received financial assistance from the gender and child welfare ministry to establish businesses.“According to my observation, what I gathered at that time is that regional councils, through the regional councillors, identify beneficiaries, and then the minister of gender gives these people money to go and start a business, but there is no monitoring,” she said.“It took us the whole day running around, looking for the projects, because even Madam Conney Manghono did not know where they were. So, for me, that was an indication that no one was going around to see where these beneficiaries are,” Lutuhezi explained. Some beneficiaries reportedly received funding as far back as 2006, while others could not immediately recall receiving assistance.Lutuhezi argued that financial support without supervision and guidance undermined poverty eradication efforts.“If we have to eradicate poverty, we have to make sure that whatever little that we give to the community, we have to monitor them, and we have to give them assistance so that they can go ahead and develop themselves,” she said.She also sought clarification on whether the projects presented at the hearing were currently operational.‘Let me apologise’Kamseb apologised on behalf of the regional leadership and maintained that management's absence should not be interpreted as deliberate disregard for parliamentary oversight.He also acknowledged that some officials might not have appreciated the importance of the committee's visit.“Maybe it was our oversight that we did not understand, some of us, the importance of the parliamentary standing committee,” he admitted.“But on behalf of the regional leadership, let me apologise that you feel humiliated. It was not our intention. It was not our intention,” Kamseb added.He also claimed that he “was not present when the parliamentary standing committee was in the region”.Kamseb cited competing administrative responsibilities and the volume of daily activities handled by regional officials as challenges affecting their availability.Kamseb did not provide a detailed explanation for the management team's absence or address the specific difficulties the delegation encountered in locating funded projects.nikanor@nmh-hub.com.na

Kunene officials under fire for snubbing MPs

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Namibian Sun 2026-11-10

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Kunene officials under fire for snubbing MPs

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Namibian Sun 2026-11-10

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