Walvis Bay Municipality progressing well with Farm 37 development

WALVIS BAY, 20 APR  – The Walvis Bay Municipality has made good progress on the establishment of a township at Farm 37 near the harbour town over the last eight months.
This was said by Walvis Bay Mayor Immanuel Wilfred at a meeting with the community on Wednesday.
Farm 37 is located about five kilometres south of Walvis Bay, near Dune 7.
The municipality plans to relocate more than 65 000 residents currently renting backyard shacks to the area.
Updating the community on their progress, Wilfred said establishing a new township could be a lengthy process, but they managed to progress well in the last eight months.
“We however face a minor challenge after we learned that there are people who own Exclusive Prospecting Licences on some parts of the land we applied for,” said the mayor.
He said the two licences are for the exploration of rocks such as marble and are expected to expire in a few months.
Wilfred further noted that the municipality is waiting for the response from the Ministry of Mines and Energy with regard to their request that the licences should not be renewed.
“We also asked to be allowed to proceed with the township development, regardless of the licences, provided that there will be no renewals.”
The mayor also informed the community that he called the meeting to get consent from the community for the reduction of some erven measuring 300 square metres to 150 square metres.
“Because it is not allowed to build a house on a plot of less than 300 square metres, we are asking for exemption on this law because we want to accommodate many people.”
The community did not object to the suggestion.
Andrew Louw from the municipality’s engineering department said the design of the township is completed and it will be made up of a combination of 2 000 erven at first.
There will also be a police station, church and clinic.
Louw said they are just waiting for the design approval from the Namibia Planning Advisory Board before they proceed to the next step, which is demarcation.
As with previous meetings on the new development, Wednesday’s meeting was well attended by community members, the majority of whom do not own land.

NAMPA