The Namibian government will soon rehabilitate eight boreholes at Duineveld Settlement in the Hardap Region.
The Director of Water Supply and Sanitation, Dr. Elijah Ngurare, says the community of Duineveld is supplied with water from a borehole that is situated on private land.
There are about 600 inhabitants at the tiny settlement of Duineveld who use this borehole, and the owner now threatens to cut off the supply because of vandalism.
"What we would want to see, not only for this water point committee, is that every water infrastructure in the rural communities should be managed in a manner that everybody has access to that resource, so what would not be good is for water to be shut down, which will deprive some communities of that water. Now, what I understand here is that there are certain practices here that are happening that are deemed maybe not acceptable or deemed not correct, and that is why maybe the threat has come, but we have been alarmed just the moment we heard that maybe water will be closed, because if anybody here is deprived of water and something bad happens, its government, it's you, and the government is all of us.
The borehole on the Strauss family farm was set up 27 years ago through a lease agreement that has since expired and is currently under review, said Jan Strauss, the farm owner.
"I receive 30 cubic meters per month, or one cubic meter per day, while the borehole is pumping 70 cubic per day, so any agreement can be renewed and reviewed. We cannot stay at one cubic meter per day while they pump 70 cubic meters per day, and I can go and show you now that the one cubic meter that we are getting is not steady because the pipeline that is going from here to my farms there is constantly damaged by this community. That is why we have decided that enough is enough and that if the government does not come in, we will cut the water."
The Governor of the Hardap Region, Salomon April, and community members in Duineveld called for an immediate solution to the water issues.
"I told the Duineveld people that for them as a community, getting water is the responsibility of the government. If there is a story about this borehole that provides water to Duineveld, that story should be between us, the government, and the people on whose private land this thing is built, so that we do not create unnecessary tension and strain between community members because at the end of the day, all of them are the same community, , they need each other," said April.
"As a community member, I am pleading with our government to assist us with this water problem so that we can have water for our people. We are all grown-ups here, so we should solve this issue as a matter of urgency," added a community member, Elma Tities.