With the national elections fast approaching, media houses are trusted to inform and keep the public up to date with the election process and the outcome.

Namibia has been consistently ranked among the top in press freedom.

Namibians get updated on what is happening around the country mainly through radio and television as well as newspapers, and such platforms will be abuzz leading up to voting day on the 27th of November.

We spoke to local journalists about their role and readiness to cover elections.

A journalist at The Namibian Newspaper, Charmaine Ngatjiheue, said, "The Namibian media houses do have the capacity, but I would say mostly looking at bigger media houses, the Namibian to an extent can cover the elections, but of course, we don't have people in the regions, like compared to how nbc and Nampa, I think there are a lot more people in the regions to sort of cover that aspect, so smaller media houses though they would struggle a little bit because they would have to work with what they see, especially if seeing that they are mostly situated in the capital were els in smaller towns they won't be able to capture that side of the elections."

Ngatjiheue said this year timely reporting is expected, particularly through social media.

Journalists, however, say reporting timely can be hampered by limited access to information. 

"I should be able to have that access; if I am not getting an answer, I send questions via email, like in most cases they are asking 'send us questions via email'. It shouldn't be press freedom in such a sense that if we are communicating on the phone or via WhatsApp and the next thing you tell me is send me all the questions via email, but you can transfer those questions to email because you have an official contact number, so press freedom is not the fact that we can move around freely; we are not necessarily free because we still live in fear," said Ester Mbathera, Assistant Editor at Windhoek Observer.

Journalists are looking forward to crisscrossing the country to keep the public up to speed with the election process and other current affairs matters.