Over 800 informal houses in Swakopmund are set to be upgraded through the national Informal Settlement Upgrading Project (ISUP) of the National Housing Enterprise (NHE) and the Ministry of Urban and Rural Development (MURD).

Minister of Urban and Rural Development Erastus Uutoni, on Friday, during the commencement of the ISUP, told residents of the DRC informal settlement in Swakopmund that housing remains a cornerstone of economic emancipation and, therefore, resources availed by the government must be utilized efficiently and effectively to benefit more Namibians.

The Minister said the national Informal Settlement Upgrading Project will fuel a significant flow in the government's unyielding passion to address and reduce the national housing backlog.

This will, in turn, create and propel tangible opportunities for sustainable economic growth and socio-economic empowerment.

Uutoni added that since the project was first launched as a pilot in 2020, the government has availed resources to the tune of 700 million dollars.

A huge chunk of this amount has since been geared towards the social progression pillar of the Harambee Prosperity Plan to aid incremental land servicing and the upgrading of informal settlements, he noted.

He also said that the Swakopmund Municipality has identified and availed 803 plots for this project, with phase one earmarked to develop 233 houses.

The minister said that since the inception of the programme in the Khomas Region, NHE, the City of Windhoek, and the Khomas Regional Council joined hands with the line ministry and devised measures to address the mushrooming of informal structures in Windhoek's informal settlements, and this collaboration has yielded immediate results with the construction of more than 750 housing units.

He said that success has paved the way for the pilot project to be rolled out on a national scale.