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RIGHTS-NAMIBIA: Gov’t Considering Water Subsidies For Poor

Nhamoinesu Mseyamwa

WINDHOEK, Feb 5 2008 (IPS) - The Namibian government, frequently accused of making water unaffordable to the poor, is finally taking steps to address this countrywide problem that threatens to hamper the country’s efforts to meet the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by world leaders at a special United Nations General Assembly meeting in 2000.

The government is considering the viability of including water subsidies for poorer families in a new development plan set to begin in April 2008.

“I first have to buy a card that I put in the meter box to draw out water. I don’t always have money for this and sometimes the money in the card just runs out before I can fetch enough for my family’s daily use,” Babakie Goreses told IPS.

Goreses is one of several thousand residents of the ‘informal’ Babylon settlement in Windhoek’s sprawling suburb of Katutura who have to buy water – when they can afford it – from a municipal tap.

In other areas where prepaid water meters have not been introduced, households still have to pay for their water in advance. They pay just under four dollars per month to the national water utility, NamWater, for the right to fetch water during a four-hour window each day.

This amount is barely affordable in a country where poverty levels are rapidly rising according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The latest statistics show that 40 percent of Namibia’s two million people currently live below the poverty line of one dollar per day. Seventy-nine percent of rural households do not have proper sanitation, and 20 percent of the rural population does not have access to safe drinking water.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Water, and Forestry has recommended in its third national five-year development plan (NDP3) that 4.3 million dollars be allocated to help people living in informal and rural areas pay NamWater.

“Our ministry does not have the money, but the idea is to hold an investor conference after the development plan is finalised,” Nickey Iyambo, the Minister of Agriculture, Water, and Forestry told a recent consultative conference on the development plan.

“We are very aware of the plight of the poor, and we are looking into the possibility to introduce a national water tariff,” Iyambo added.

The government has also approved the National Water Policy White Paper of 2006, and it has resolved that a Water Resources Management Agency be created to oversee the integration of water resources management.

This agency will ensure that more water is made available to the population by finding new sources (especially groundwater), using more water from rivers, better recycling processes, and expanding desalination plants along the Atlantic coast.

In Nov. 2007, the government ordered NamWater to open all water taps in rural areas that had been closed because of non-payment of accounts – giving a temporary reprieve to those households that still owe money to the water utility.

Namibia is an arid country, with only the northern regions and the area served by the Tsumeb-Otavi-Grootfontein groundwater aquifers in the central parts of the country having sufficient water to supply local populations.

The country has access to only three rivers – the Zambezi, Kunene and Kavango – while its largest reservoirs are vulnerable to high levels of evaporation.

Struggling to recover millions of dollars in unpaid debts, in 2000 NamWater introduced a prepaid billing system that is administered by local municipalities. The revenue generated through the new system is used to cover the costs of water provision as well as cross-subsidising other basic services such as streetlights and sanitation.

Rates charged by the Windhoek Municipality reveal however, that the new system not only perpetuates old inequalities, but also tends to exacerbate them. Households in informal settlements, or squatter camps, and rural areas actually have to pay more per litre of water than those living in regular housing.

In what is described as a ‘formal settlement’ in Windhoek, a family of six is expected to pay less than five cents for the usual daily minimum of forty litres. In an impoverished area – such as Babylon – the same amount of water costs five times more.

In a report entitled ‘Water Privatisation in Namibia – creating a new apartheid? ‘, local researcher Jade McClune argues that since the introduction of the prepaid water system, government income per cubic metre of water has steadily risen by more than 33 percent per year – far exceeding the rate of which the country’s incomes are rising.

McClune suggests that an upper limit for water prices be set in order to make water affordable to all.

Many Namibians – unable to pay the additional charges for water – have had their taps disconnected and have fallen back on more traditional sources of water, such as streams and waterholes.

“Artificial or man-made water shortages that reproduce the conditions of a natural drought by cutting off water to rural communities are produced through the cost-recovery approach enforced by NamWater,” said McClune. “The non-payment of water and electricity bills is not simply the fault of selfish residents, but also a sorry reflection of the economic state in which the nation finds itself.”

The Namibian human rights organisation, National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) suggests that the provision of water, both in rural and urban areas, should become one of the public sector’s core functions.

Phil ya Nangoloh, NSHR’s executive director, says his organisation has been approached by people complaining that they used to receive free water during the colonial era and immediately after independence in 1990. They now ask why this has changed.