LPM has maintained its stance to pre-allocate land to landless Namibians, saying it's the only solution to the housing problem in the country.

Land delivery in Namibia requires a multi-faceted approach to ensure that every citizen has a place to build a roof over their heads.

In order to fast-track this, the Keetmanshooop Municipality started allocating land to residents at Krönlein and Tseiblaagte to a suburb.

However, the Minister of Urban and Rural Development Erastus Utoni ordered the council to stop the pre-allocation of unplanned, and unserviced Land in the town.

However, the LPM leadership disagree and informed the council to go ahead.

"We acted merely on the promises that we have made to ourselves and to our people and there is nothing with that, in fact, we cannot offer any apologies for that, and we shouldn't, why should we keep on being patronised by people who got no clue, as a matter of fact, all councillors under LPM should record and give PTO thereafter classified and accord dwellings based on affordability, that's what we should be doing, identify people, have a database and once the money is there, land servicing is done, you continue to allocate to people," said LPM's deputy leader and chief strategist Henny Seibeb.

Seibeb also expressed disappointment over the allocation of insufficient funds allocated to local authorities for land servicing saying it hinders land delivery.

"The actions of councillors undermine the rule of law or the local authorities act but rather aim to address the bottlenecks in the land distribution policies that deny people from owning land and tackle the urban land crisis subsuming town councils in Namibia due to the growth of the informal settlement, the land question is critical and prominent to the socio-economic growth of the country as it reduces marginalisation and poverty over a sustained period and eliminates inequality, especially among and other vulnerable groups, hence there is a need for government to address it urgently."

LPM Chief Changer Campaigner Bernadus Swartbooi says the party will roll out a land pre-allocation programme in other parts of the country where it is in charge.

"We have a political and eco programme of action as articulated in our manifesto that we are implementing which we stick to despite difficulties that the central government is putting in our way which is an important transformational way that we are chatting forward," said LPM's Chief Change Campaigner Bernadus Swartbooi.

Swartbooi further commended the pre-land allocation initiative undertaken by the City of Windhoek whilst under coalition saying it has helped allocate plots to 30 000 youths and low-income earners.

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LPM

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Jefta Tjihumino