Local authorities are being urged to prioritise giving residents access to fundamental services like water and proper sanitation.

The Deputy Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Evelyn Nawase-Taeyele, emphasised this necessity at the commissioning and groundbreaking ceremony in Kamanjab, Kunene Region.

The event marked the beginning of a significant project that will provide bulk sewerage and reticulation systems to 12,000 households, coupled with the development of low-cost housing.

The Deputy Urban and Rural Development Minister called on local authorities to ensure that tariffs for basic services are affordable and that services are delivered equitably in both urban and informal areas.

"It should indeed be the priority of each local authority to supply affordable drinking water to its residents. Water remains imperative and a key priority, as one cannot improve sanitation without it, and it is therefore a primary ingredient for safe sanitation."

Nawase-Taeyele commended the Kamanjab Village Council for its clean financial audits, affordable tariffs offered to its informal settlement residents, and for setting up boreholes for sufficient water supply as well as a new sewerage pump station.

"I am pleased to observe that Kamanjab Village Council took the lead in piloting and implementing a special tariff for their Ourob informal settlement, which consists of four hundred and twenty households, I am informed. With all these efforts and initiatives that you have put in place, I tend to agree that this Kamanjab qualifies to be upgraded to town level. I have equally learned that Kamanjab Village Council drilled a total of five new boreholes to add on to the two  they alread drilled in 2021."

The new home owner, Frans Tjiveze, was over the moon.

"Our government is trying its best. It gives me a really safe and comfortable place to call home. now from the ghetto to a town boy. Thank you very much, really, and also to the stakeholders who brought me this roof. Thanks a lot."

Other notable projects under the village council include plans for the inclusion of flexible land tenure at Ourab Informal Settlement, the surveying of land in the Newland informal area, and the proclamation of the settlement's extensions Four and Five.