Residents demand debt relief, better services
The Khomas Ratepayers and Residents Association presented a petition to the Windhoek City Council on Tuesday in which residents demand, among other things, the cancellation of municipal debts for pensioners and a waiver of the requirement to switch to prepaid electricity in order to benefit from debt relief.Shaun Gariseb read the petition on behalf of the group and appealed to the city to extend the debt relief programme to pensioners living in the 43 Build Together housing projects. The association noted that the Build Together model is no longer working well and that people want to own their homes with full title deeds.
Another point of the petition concerns the integration of debt management with the electricity department, particularly with regard to fines for electricity evasion. The residents demand that such fines be paid in installments in the future.
They also demanded that the City of Windhoek end its use of the private debt collection agency Redforce, arguing that its services were too expensive and placed an additional burden on residents.
The petition was received by O'Brien Ekandjo. He thanked the residents for their candid comments and emphasised that while the municipality understood their concerns, it relied on the revenue to maintain services.
Ekandjo confirmed that work was currently underway to standardize processes between the debt management and electricity supply departments.