Setting realistic poverty reduction goals

The Ministry of Poverty Eradication and Social Welfare this week launched the national blueprint on wealth redistribution and poverty eradication. The document is largely aimed at advancing strategies to combat poverty and the high levels of inequality in our society. This is not the first time that government has come up with proposed interventions and programmes to tackle the contentious issue of poverty. Despite such interventions, there has been average success and even outright failure. There is a growing divide between the haves and have-nots. Tin shanties or slums continue to blight most of our towns, accommodating thousands of households. The same can also be said about the mansions, golf estates and high-end security villages sprouting up around the City of Windhoek. Towards the end of last year, the Namibia Statistics Agency announced three new poverty lines, with households having N$293 per month for food classified as being extremely poor. A typical Namibian household comprises of four or five people. The second class of food poverty is for the severely poor, which was set at N$389 per household per month. The third poverty line is for all those classified as poor, and is set at N$520.8 per household per month. The NSA argued there has been an overall reduction in the proportion of the population which is classified as poor from 28.7% during 2009/10 to 18% in 2015/16. The severely poor dropped from 15.3% to 11%, while the extremely poor came down from 7.3% to 5.8%. This is debatable and we are convinced that thousands of Namibians will disagree with this declaration. The time has come for us to shift the narrative on poverty and practically do more to tackle high joblessness, poor education, spatial inequality, widespread corruption, uneven public services and failing healthcare system, among others. It is useless for us to come up with unrealistic targets in the first place owing to our poor implementation success rate. Our country is well-endowed with natural resources. We need to fully utilise our resources to help alleviate poverty in our country. These resources should not just benefit a selected and well-connected few.