Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Erastus Uutoni, has said the government is hard at work to ensure the completion of the mass housing project, with 111 houses expected to be completed by July 2023.

In an interview with Nampa recently, Uutoni said the ministry appointed a contractor, New Era Investment, in November 2022 to complete the 505 houses in Swakopmund in the Erongo Region. Sixty-four of these houses have been completed and are ready for handing over, whilst 111 are expected to be completed in July 2023 and 319 in early 2024.

The mass housing project was the brainchild of former president, Hifikepunye Pohamba, to address Namibia’s housing crisis, with a promise to build 148 000 houses by 2030. So far, 4 130 houses have been handed over to beneficiaries, while 891 houses remained unoccupied due to incompletion, including 24 in Opuwo, 505 in Swakopmund and 362 in Windhoek.

“Government is hard at work to ensure that what has not been completed commences and is ratified. The instruction by the government is that the ministry should take up that responsibility. We are busy… and very soon the completed houses will be handed over to the beneficiaries,” Uutoni noted.

He added that the project’s abrupt stop in 2015 was due to legal disputes and underperformance by contractors.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency