Statelessness due to a lack of national identity documents is said to be worsening poverty among the Khwe community living in the Bwabwata National Park in Kavango East's Mukwe Constituency.

The Village Development Committee (VDC) at Omega One Settlement says many Khwedum-speaking people there have no national documents.

Omega One has the largest concentration of the Khwe community inhabiting the formally Western Caprivi area.

The Village Development Committee Chairperson, Ephraim Kativa, says it becomes difficult to bury the San people, especially the elderly because families are poor and cannot afford a decent send-off.

Kativa said the elderly and children are deprived of social grants and other benefits.

"They give them voter's cards to vote, but they will never give them birth certificates and IDs; fingerprints are taken every time, but nothing comes of it. As you can see for yourself, Omega is full of people who live in extreme poverty."

VDC vice chairperson Festus Pandureni says a list of about 100 people was submitted to Mukwe Constituency Councillor Damian Maghambayi to help facilitate their registration.

He says the majority of them carry South West African identity cards, indicating that they were born in either Angola, Botswana, or Zambia.

Pandureni says Home Affairs, Immigration Safety, and Security Deputy Minister Daniel Kashikola was made aware of the challenges the stateless people face during his visit to Omega last year.

He has now called for an intervention by the Prime Minister's Office.

"Maybe for him, it will be easy since he is the deputy minister for marginalized communities, but he must come and intervene because I know even if I tell the Home Affairs, people to come, I understand they might not make it because they have been coming here for several times but until today, so we want the Office of the Prime Minister to come and attend to this issue."

Councillor Damian Maghambayi says his constituency is home to about 7,000 stateless people.

Maghambayi says he has submitted the list to the Ministry of Home Affairs in accordance with a Cabinet directive on the issue of statelessness.

"Now that you see a majority of our people on this side, the most problematic thing that I discovered is that some of them were born in Angola. They were born in Zambia, they were born in Botswana, and you find that this one is a barakwena who is born in Angola and who is born in Botswana, and this one is a Mbukushu who is born in Zambia, born in Angola, and born in Botswana, but in Botswana, the government is unable to give them documents because they are referred to as Namibians in Zambia, just as they are told to go to your country, Angola, in the same way. I think these people are the ones that are now called "stateless."

The councillor noted that many of those on the list from Omega One are expected to undergo fingerprint verification soon.