About 29 reed houses have been destroyed in a fire at Aussenkehr settlement in ||Kharas Region this week.

The acting Police Regional Crime Coordinator for ||Kharas, Detective Chief Inspector Jochobetha Angukku, confirmed the fire incident that broke out on Tuesday morning.

She said the cause of the fire is not yet known.

But, according to an eyewitness, the fire started burning from the roof of a reed house that was locked and quickly spread to other makeshift structures.

The Orange River Irrigation Project along the Orange River at Aussenkehr expects improved summer agricultural production this year, despite its financial woes.

Paulus Mungoba, acting project manager, said this in an interview with nbc News.

The Orange River Irrigation Project (ORIP) farm, owned by the government, is growing a variety of vegetables, including pumpkins, butternuts, watermelon, onions, sweet melon, beetroots, and carrots.

According to Mungoba, the crop yields look very positive.

The Karasburg West Constituency Office has provided temporary accommodation to 57 households whose reed houses were destroyed by fire at Aussenkehr farms early Tuesday morning. 

The fire also claimed the life of 27-year-old Willem Shiyoleni.

Karasburg West Constituency Councillor Taimi Amakali confided that the displaced fire victims will be housed in temporary shelters.

She said some grape companies have donated building materials to the affected households to rebuild with corrugated iron and zinc.

The Roads Authority (RA) has announced that District Road 212 (DR212 - Aussenkehr to Rosh Pinah) is now open to all traffic.

This comes after the RA issued a notice in mid-February indicating that South Africa had experienced above-average rainfall, which had the potential to cause the Orange River to flood.

This, RA feared, would have an effect on some Namibian roads in the country’s southern region.

The Namibia Grape Company at Aussenkehr in the ||Kharas Region has exported more than 2 million boxes of grapes to the European market over the last season.

The company's MD, Gideon Nuunyango, revealed this during the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Natural Resources oversight visit to the project.

According to Nuunyango, the company packed 2,2 million grapes during last year's harvest, with each box weighing 4.5 kilograms, exceeding the targeted total of 1,8 million cartons.

Workers of the Orange River Irrigation Project (ORIP) at Aussenkehr in the ||Kharas Region say they have been left uncertain about their jobs following the government's recent decision to dissolve Agricultural Business Development Agency. 

ORIP is one of the country's eleven green scheme projects managed by state-owned Agribusdev. 

The ORIP workers voiced their concerns about possibly losing their job security during an oversight visit by a Parliamentary Standing Committee. 

An unproductive green scheme was given as the reason for Agribusdev's dissolution. 

Although he lost most of his business after the 2006 flash floods in Aussenkehr, Kutenda Ndonga, an informal furniture maker, is calling on young people in the country to make use of indigenous ways of producing furniture that can be exported to other countries.