Hardap residents criticise resettlement programme

MARIENTAL, 04 JULY – Hardap Region inhabitants on Tuesday said the land resettlement programme is skewed and unfair, while labelling the qualifying criteria as discriminatory towards the poor and uneducated Namibians.
The Office of the Ombudsman conducted a public hearing, chaired by Ombudsman John Walters, on the Land Reform and Resettlement Programme at the Mariental Community Hall, which was attended by 21 people.
Walters said the need for a national inquiry concerning the land resettlement programme is necessitated by the many complaints against Regional Resettlement Committees.
“There are reported alleged incidents of unfair treatment in the allocation of land, allegations that the primary objectives of the Resettlement Policy have not been achieved and allegations that resettlement farms are not occupied by beneficiaries but subleased to others,” he said.
A 69-year-old female farmer said she has been applying for a resettlement farm for over 20 years without success and attributed the situation to unjust qualifying criteria.
“I am old now and tired of applying to be resettled as I have been doing so for the last 20 years. Where will I get an agricultural qualification at this day and age to be considered for resettlement?”
She further said most people, especially old people, don’t have banks and only make use of the savings accounts offered by NamPost.
“It is heart-breaking that our government prefers education qualification over us, the disadvantaged citizens,” she noted.
Another contributor, a male farmer said most farms in the Hardap Region are allocated to people without livestock at the expense of successful communal farmers.
“I know of a lot of farms in the region that are subleased to other people, because the original beneficiaries do not have livestock. Is it fair while some of us, successful communal farmers suffer with our livestock and leave them in corridors to die?”
He said the farming experience gained over the years goes to waste and the country suffers indirectly due to this, because people who could have contributed to the economy of the country stop farming.
He said applicants do not even receive feedback from the Ministry of Land Reform as to why their countless applications were not successful and called on the government to do regular inspections and see whether the original beneficiaries are in fact farming at the allocated farms.
The resettlement programme is intended to cover all kinds of landless, displaced and destitute people in the country.
The Office of the Ombudsman will also hold similar hearings in the 13 other regions in the country.
NAMPA