Eenhana residents owe council millions

EENHANA – Residents of Eenhana in the Ohangwena Region owe the council N$20 million in unpaid municipal services for the previous financial year, said the town mayor Amos Nangolo.

Nangolo delivered his 2020/21 budget speech last week.

Nongolo said such a large amount of money owed by the residents or clients is the council’s biggest challenge and makes a huge dent on the ability to deliver the necessary services to the Eenhana community.

The mayor urged the town’s finance department to come up with innovative, aggressive and customer-friendly ways of collecting or recovering the debts and to ensure that the trend of continuous debt non-payment is addressed and prevented from spreading further.

“Let us encourage our debtors to settle their debts so that we are able to sustain our operations,” said Nangolo.

Markets

The council is also faced with the second challenge of trading space for the informal traders at the town.

Eenhana only has one formal market for informal traders, which kept the council busy dealing with the issue of informal traders doing illegal trading in and around town.

According to Nangolo, the council has now identified various sites in the locations for the purpose of developing more open markets.

“We believe that such a move will ease the congestion at our open market and also help alleviate the need for more trading spaces in town,” stated the Eenhana town leader.

The town’s 2020/21 budget is N$92.1 million with its biggest chunk of N$37.5 million going to the council’s general operating expenses and N$30.4 million set for capital projects. - Nampa