Town planners criticise govt

Private town and regional planners fear that a decision by the ministry of urban and regional development to cancel a proposed amendment scheme aimed at dealing with a backlog of town and property planning applications at the Windhoek municipality will likely lead to more delays.

They also say the impasse does not resolve a longstanding and critical problem for the City.

“We are very disappointed in the response from the minister, especially with the current initiative from the president to drive and management performance in government. This decision will certainly delay the processing of planning applications even further,” Harold Kisting, President of the Namibia Institute of Town and Regional Planners (NITRP) told Namibian Sun last week.

In letters to the ministry earlier this year, members of NITRP told authorities there that it is “simply unacceptable that a simple rezoning can take more than a year at the City of Windhoek to be approved.

“It has become standard that rezoning applications take more than two years for planning approval from the City and another two years to get included in an amendment scheme to finalise the rezoning process before investors can benefit from the new development rights.”

These delays have led to “low levels of investment and therefore low levels of job creation at a time that Namibia can ill afford,” letters from NITRP noted.

Last week Kisting told Namibian Sun that town planning “is about development, investment and job creation. If we take longer than one year to process development applications, we are not serious as a capital city.”

He explained that the city, through speedy processing of applications, is able to add additional income streams through betterment and endowment fees “and ultimately grow the rates and taxes base of the City.”

He noted that while the city has asked for a government bailout they could “grow their income by expediting the planning approval process.”

Town planners say that it is due to the city's slow response to applications that Windhoek “lags behind smaller municipalities in land and housing delivery”.

In a letter last year, addressed to the municipality's department of urban planning and property management, NITRP and members of the Namibia Council for Town and Regional Planners (NCTRP) said the City of Windhoek is considered a leader in local authority management in Namibia and many follow its example.

However, the letter noted that the processing time of planning and property applications “unfortunately does not live up to the standard of excellence and negatively impacts on the image of the city.”



Close, but not close enough

According to NITRP, the only feedback received to various proposals and letters of complaints to the municipality last year, was from the Namibia Planning and Advisory Board (NAMPAB), who approved the compilation of the Special Amendment Scheme 97.

The special scheme was then submitted to NAMPAB for approval on 6 June 2017.

However, shortly before the expiration date of the notice of the special scheme, to which the City was obliged to respond before 19 September, a letter signed by Minister Sophia Shaningwa on 9 September, ordered NAMPAB to retract the amendment notice without further delay.

The minister noted that she was seeking legal advice and was waiting to be properly briefed on the matter before commencing to meet with all stakeholders, including NAMPAB, the municipality and the ministry, on the amendment scheme and relevant issues.

NITRP told Namibian Sun the ministry's instruction to cancel the notice “shields poor performance and will make City officials even more arrogant in the interactions with town planners and clients.”

The 2017 August council agenda, which stated that City officials feared that NAMPAB's approval of the amendment scheme would cost the city “tens of millions” in betterment and other fees, among other worries, showed that the city had hastily enacted a “military style” action plan, that led to at least 217 rezoning applications being finalised before this week's deadline.

In NITRP said a retraction of an amendment scheme was the right of the ministry, but noted that the city should instead present an action plan on how to deal with the backlog and future applications.



From bad to worse

In July last year, a formal complaint was sent to the City, highlighting their growing frustrations, possible causes for delays and suggestions to resolve the delays.

In an October letter to the ministry of urban and rural development, the NITRP informed the ministry that although members had tried “all formal avenues to find a solution to the current lack of responsiveness from the city, but to no avail.”

The City of Windhoek did not respond to the formal complaint and did not invite representatives from the concerned parties to a meeting to discuss the issue, the letter stated.

NITRP urged the ministry “to attend to the current crisis and rescue the situation. Windhoek as a local authority is losing out on much needed investments that will create jobs for residents and income for the city coffers, because of unreasonable delays.”







JANA-MARI SMITH