Kavango West Region Governor, Sirkka Ausiku said 32 per cent of the population in that region still travel at least 31 kilometres to access safe drinking water.

Ausiku during her State of the Region Address on Friday said this is an indication that more still needs to be done in terms of water provision to communities.

The Kavango West Region, she said has 405 villages out of which 134 villages do not have water. Mpungu Constituency is the highest concentration with 58 villages with no water.

“Although more boreholes continue to be drilled there is still a backlog,” the governor stressed, and called on the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform and NamWater to come up with a permanent solution to these challenges such as constructing a water pipeline along national roads.

On fisheries and marine resources, Ausiku expressed her disappointment with the allocation of fishing rights and quotas to the region which she said was a mere 0.4 per cent.

According to her, the allocation of financial resources or fishing quotas in the country must be informed by the available official statistics by the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) on key developmental aspects of each region.

“This will lead to equity and fairness in budget and resource allocation,” she said.

The governor went on to call on government offices, ministries and agencies to start drafting regional budgets with input from the regions through existing structures such as the village development committees, constituency development committees and regional development coordination committees.

She said this way all involved will agree on priority projects that respond to the national development plans and Harambee Prosperity Plan 2.

Source: Namibia Press Agency