United People’s Movement welcomes second land conference.

REHOBOTH, 16 Apr– United People’s Movement (UPM)’s newly elected president, Petrus Junius, welcomed the envisaged Second Land Conference, saying it is an important occasion on the political calendar.
Speaking during his acceptance speech after being elected as president during the UPM Central Committee elections on Saturday, Junius said they have heard that the land conference will now take place in October this year.
“Rehoboth has a long standing issue on land and the expropriation thereof by the Namibian Government and we will have to bring it to that conference for discussion,” Junius said.
He said people from all over the country are urgently looking for a piece of land to build a place to live, and Rehoboth is no exception.
“We are strongly against land grabbing but when there is so much land available for one to get a small piece, why must people go without it? And why tell people that there is no money for the servicing of land while millions are thrown around to buy farms for the Namibian Defence Force,” Junias charged.
President Hage Geingob, in his State of the Nation Address last week, said due to a need for wider consultation, the second conference was postponed, and is now set to take place in the first week of October 2018.
The conference seeks to address the structure of land ownership and debate the willing seller, willing buyer principle, ancestral land, claims for restitution and expropriation in public interest with just compensation, as provided for in Namibia’s constitution.
Geingob said urban land reform and resettlement criteria, as well as the Veterinary Cordon Fence that separates northern Namibia from the central and southern parts of the country, will also be debated at the conference.
A high-level committee chaired by the prime minister has been constituted and will be served by technical committees under the chairpersonship of the line minister, comprising ministerial and civil society subject matter experts.
NAMPA