Government employees in the Erongo Region voted in favour of a strike during their two-day voting exercise held on Thursday and Friday.

The voting exercise was aimed to establish whether civil servants should strike or not, after the trade unions representing workers reached a deadlock on the wage negotiations with government. The workers are demanding a salary increase of nine per cent, transport allowance of 10 per cent and another nine per cent on housing benefits.

Namibia Public Workers Union (NAPWU) Regional Coordinator for Erongo, Richard Kayimbi, announced the provisional election results at the verification centre on Saturday in Swakopmund, which are as follows;

Total votes cast in the region 2712

Yes 2572

No 115

Spoiled 25

Kayimbi said he was satisfied with the total number of voters in the region.

“The total number of voters is understandable because despite the cold weather conditions in the coastal area, workers in the region sacrificed and came out in big numbers,” Kayimbi expressed.

Meanwhile, NANTU Regional Chairperson for Erongo Region, who was also the returning officer, Chris Eixab, said that there were challenges of inaccessible polling stations, while the unions did not set up fixed polling stations in towns such as Usakos and Omaruru either, which also hampered the staff from the Ministry of Health and Social Services to go and vote as most of them work in shifts and were not available when the mobile polling teams arrived.

“Despite these minor challenges, we managed to dispatch mobile teams to these towns. We appreciate that the government officials were able to oversee that the process runs smoothly and has respected the labour law of our country,” Eixab noted.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency