ONIIPA - Since Oniipa was proclaimed a town in 2015 it has yet to build modern brick houses for its residents though the local authority has made great strides to service some parts of the new town.
One such servicing development was witnessed on Tuesday when the town council serviced an area estimated to have 56 erven at Onethindi Proper that was provided with electricity.

Electricity was installed at a cost of N$2.4 million, but the area is expected to be fully serviced at a cost of N$40 million.

The chief executive officer of Oniipa Town Council, Junias Jacob, gave the assurance that the second phase of services which will include the provision of tarred roads, water and sewerage reticulation is expected to kick off in September and finalised at the end of March next year.

“Once all is in place we will start with the construction of the houses. But we are still looking into which model we will use to construct the houses,” Jacob responded when asked whether the town council has funds to construct new brick houses.

Jacob attributes what seems to be slow progress in development at the town to the economic challenges the country is currently facing as the economy is in a slump.

Jacob says the council has not received enough funds from the government to implement its planned projects. Currently, the town council has over 800 applications for houses.

But currently the council only has about 600 plots which are partially serviced.
“We were not able to service any plots fully because of the budget – we are using the little that we have to serve our residents,” Jacob said.

The only areas whose services are almost complete are those where there were existing residents at the proclamation of the town.

But the council says service provision is a priority and is optimistic that the impact of such service will be felt by every resident at the town within the next two years.

Meanwhile the council is still struggling to compensate communal farmers in order to pave way for development and currently there are 30 households being evaluated for compensation, some of which have been on the waiting list since 2015 and are still waiting to be compensated.