Fisheries and Marine Resources Minister, Derek Klazen, has expressed dissatisfaction with the non-completion of his ministry’s regional office at Rundu.

Klazen, who is on a weeklong visit to the two Kavango regions said: “It was a very disturbing sight when I visited the construction of our regional office here in Rundu. What I saw there was not good. The ministry has failed to build this office for the past 10 years.”

Work on the project came to a standstill after the Ministry of Works and Transport allegedly refused to pay the contractor, due to unclear reasons.

A company named Oume Construction was contracted to construct the regional office in 2012 by the Ministry of Works and Transport at a cost of N.dollars 14 million.

Its contract was terminated and another contractor, Afrika Civil Engineering, was appointed in 2015 to continue work at a cost of N.dollars 16 million.

This contract too was terminated in October 2018.

“If we want to complete this regional office we need to do it in phases. We need the original costing or bill of quantities of this building. Prices have gone up now since the original bill of quantities was done 10 years ago. We have a lot of work to do,” Klazen said.

Currently, the ministry in the region rents office space from the Namibia Industrial Development Agency (NIDA) at a monthly cost of N.dollars 27 000. That office has been without electricity since February.

Meanwhile, during his visit, Klazen will hold internal consultation meetings to discuss the status of aquaculture in northern Namibia, aquaculture policy framework challenges, and operational and administrative challenges in the north, amongst others.

Director in the directorate of aquaculture and inland fisheries, Rudi Cloete, said the consultative meetings are going to strive to find solutions to problems in all sectors of the ministry.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency