By Lylie Happiness
OSHAKATI, 27 April 2022 – Oshakati is a designated town but, despite living a town life, people are still finding themselves living together with agricultural animals that are meant to be in villages. Some residents have pig pens at their houses which is disturbing the peace and causing arguments and conflict among neighbors, because of the smell and noise pollution.
Pigs make noise and produce a bad smell, and their waste is nauseating. During the rainy season, people in the community breathe in these smells and find it hard to eat their food outside their houses.
“We live together with domestic animals. Wherever you go around Oshakati you will bump into animals. And they find shelter in our yards at night, and every morning one needs to clean out animal waste to keep the yard clean,“ said one Evululuko resident. “It’s not only pigs which one finds here, but there are cattle, goats, and donkeys that come into our yards destroying our gardens and other plants.
“We are not happy about this situation at all, we want our town council to get involved”.
A woman in her early 30s, a resident of Oneshila said: “Animals roaming around town are from nearby villages around Oshakati, like Ehenye, Ompundja, and Okatana.
“There was a time when municipality workers used to come and chase away animals from town and put them in their kraals for owners to collect them and be given a fine. “But now we don’t know if this is still being practiced or not because animals are everywhere,” she said, adding Oshakati no longer had the standard of a town.
Oshakati Town Council’s corporate communications officer, Katirina Kamari,
said the council was well aware of the animals roaming and residents keeping livestock in their yards.
“We had several meetings with residents of Evululuko, Oneshila, and others addressing this issue,” she said.
“Animals are not allowed in town and neither may they be kept. If a resident has a chicken that is understandable but to have more than that is already outside of our law.”
Residents, she said, should report the matter to the council, and identify the owners, but they never want to do that. When officials want to impound the animals, complainants no longer want to say anything.
The law requires that the animals be impounded by the town council and owners have to pay a fine to reclaim them. The amount depends on the number of animals.
“So no animals are allowed in town and if people start reporting, and not hiding each other, we will surely take action,” Kamari stressed. – Namibia Daily News.
