Civil servants in the Kavango East Region voted in favour of a strike during their two-day voting exercise held on Thursday and Friday.
The exercise was aimed at establishing whether civil servants should strike or not after the trade unions representing workers reached a deadlock on the wage negotiations with the government. The workers are demanding a salary increase of nine per cent, a transport allowance of 10 per cent and an increase of nine per cent on housing benefits.
Chairperson of the Namibia National Teachers Union (Nantu) in the region, Lukas Mbangu announced the provisional election results at the verification centre on Saturday in Rundu, which are as follows;
Mukwe Constituency
Total votes cast 673
Yes 663
No 7
Spoiled 3
Ndiyona Constituency
Total votes cast 311
Yes 307
No 4
Spoiled 0
Ndonga Linena Constituency
Total votes cast 155
Yes 154
No 1
Spoiled 0
Mashare Constituency
Total votes cast 128
Yes 126
No 2
Spoiled 0
Rundu Rural Constituency
Total votes cast 291
Yes 277
No 13
Spoiled 1
The Rundu Urban Constituency
Total votes cast 1682
Yes 1648
No 30
Spoiled 4
Mbangu said although the voting process went well, he was not happy with the outcome.
“I was expecting the result for this region to at least be above 5 000 or so. It seems as if only teachers really came out in numbers compared to other civil servants. I am a little disappointed and don’t understand why this was the outcome,” he said.
Namibia Public Workers Union (Napwu) representative, Johannes Mudumbi Sikwaya echoed the same sentiments, noting that he too is puzzled by the results of the region recorded.
“It looks like other civil servants did not come out to vote and only teachers came in numbers. Be as it may, the voting process went well and we did not experience that many challenges,” he said.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency