Job happy with own performance, slates peers

OGONE TLHAGE



WINDHOEK

Academic Job Amupanda says he is satisfied with his term as City of Windhoek mayor and that he will sleep peacefully about the work he achieved.

He made the remarks following the last council meeting held ahead of elections on Wednesday, and also used the opportunity to take shots at his fellow council members.

“I am very comfortable as chairperson of council that we did our best in the circumstances. I will go to bed peacefully. I’m not even going to spend a night caucusing on who must be mayor, who must be what,” he said.

“I am very comfortable; I spoke to the deputy mayor [Clemencia Hanases], she is also very comfortable in terms of the work we have done, the smiles we put on the faces of employees, the smiles we put on people’s faces who are not recognised in this place.”

Bemoaning the City’s runaway debt, he said: “You cannot recover that debt with incompetent councillors, incompetent city, incompetent residents. We have the most corrupt people here at the City. A big syndicate that involves City employees”.

Caught in the crossfire

Despite tooting his own horn, Amupanda said there were also matters council could have dealt with more speedily.

Using an analogy of a balance sheet, he said council should group its successes and failures as assets and liabilities.

“Of course, I am on the side of the liabilities. I’m afraid that we are slowly retreating into some episode where council has when we were observing it from outside; the very thing that we are not happy about, on the liabilities side,” he said.

“We were sadly reproducing ourselves and morphing into the things we were working to change.”

The former mayor further lamented the time it takes for decisions to be made.

“It is also at the liabilities side that we take long to arrive at a decision. We take too long to arrive at decisions and as we take out our AK-47s, we did not each other but we killed the civilians; we killed people caught in the crossfire.”