Walvis Bay re-tables its “Budget for the People

The Council of the Municipality of Walvis Bay re-tabled its 2021-2022 budget during an Extraordinary Council Meeting on Monday night.
The tabling of the budget was initially scheduled to be ta-bled in mid-May. Council decided on 11 May to delay tab-ling the budget, as it needed more time to incorporate ideas and inputs made by members of the public during three consul-tative public meetings earlier.
This is the first bud-get by the newly elected Town Council which comprises of a ruling coalition of the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC), the Joint Wal-vis Bay Residents Association, and the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM). The budget has been described in recent days as the “Budget for the People, by the People”, as it incorporated inputs made by members of the public during public consultative meetings.
In his budget speech, the Chairman of the Management Committee, Cllr Leroy Victor said as a direct result of these inputs made by the public, several items were added to the this financial year’s budget. These are: a new vending area in Narraville, the Narraville Old Age Home, the hostel redevelopment in Kuisebmond, a new road link to Kabeljou Street in Kuisebmond and a traffic round-about for Meersig.
The Capital Budget was set at N$303 million of which 40 % will be spend on land development projects for housing, 13 % on infrastructure repairs and replacement, 19 % on service delivery projects, 21 % on social upliftment projects and 7 % on vehicles and operating related capital.
“I can assure you that Council will continue to engage land delivery projects in Walvis Bay, as this serves as one of the main spurs for in-vestment, prosperity and job creation”, Cllr. Victor explained.
With regard to land development projects, N$38 million will go towards Farm 37 for bulk services. The number of erven that will be made available at Farm 37 will only be known once the bulk servicing concluded.
An amount of N$14 million is budgeted for the development of plot 8635 Kuisebmond which will yield 200 low-income residential erven.
N$29 million is budgeted for the development of plot 8 in Narraville which will yield 185 erven and N$41 million will be spent on the development of more extensions to Walvis Bay for new suburbs.