The Minister of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform, Calle Schlettwein, on Monday told the leadership of the Kavango East and West regions to clean their house, during a meeting on the revitalisation of the green schemes in these regions.

On 27 May this year, the leadership of the two regions drafted a letter to the minister in which they requested his audience on the revitalisation of the green schemes, citing how they felt they were in a vacuum on the matter.

As a response to this letter, Schlettwein met the representatives of these two regions on Monday, engaging with them on the envisaged revitalisation of the green schemes.

During the discussions, chairperson of the Kavango West Regional Council, Joseph Sivaku asked the minister to put on hold the procurement process regarding the outsourcing of the green schemes until they had exhausted their deliberations with him.

Schlettwein said there were some proposals in the submission by the leadership the ministry could entertain and some the ministry wouldn’t entertain.

“What makes it very difficult for me is to halt a process to engage the private and local investors to get the green schemes operational. Your insistence would be difficult to entertain,” he said.

The regional leadership recommended to the minister that they want local ownership in the management of the green schemes, as well as a review on the fee per hectare paid to the traditional authority as lease fee.

Currently that fee is N.dollars 50.

The regional councils also want shareholding for control, monitoring and coordination purposes.

“Councils cannot take over green schemes. That would be difficult to achieve. Councils are politically elected and have a broad mandate to look at. If councils are going to run green schemes then they must also run cattle farms,” Schlettwein responded.

Schlettwein informed the meeting that he would revert to them once he has consulted the ministry’s technical team.

Meanwhile, Sivaku called on the minister to give the leadership timely feedback before stating that he replied to their letter after two months.

Schlettwein did not take this comment lightly and reminded the leadership that he too wrote them a letter in which he asked them to provide him with material on communal land administration two years ago, but got no response.

The minister called on the regional leadership to first clean their house before calling him.

In March this year, Government announced that it would from June 2022 issue a request for proposals to lease 11 green schemes in the country.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency