Civil society organisations have called for an urgent rollout of the basic income grant, while claiming that the levels of poverty and desperation among ordinary Namibians are at an all-time high.
The call to implement the income grant is one of the key submissions by representatives of civil society organisations (CSOs) to the Ministry of Finance and Public Enterprises and the National Planning Commission (NPC).
“There is an urgent need for a basic income grant to be rolled out. The previous Cabinet decision to convert the food bank into a monthly cash grant is welcome, but the numbers of beneficiaries are negligible in comparison to the scale of the problem,” it stated.
Institute of Public Policy Research Executive Director Graham Hopwood said here on Monday that the levels of poverty and desperation in Namibia are unparalleled since its independence in 1990.
“There is an urgent need for a basic income grant to be rolled out. The previous Cabinet’s decision to convert the food bank into a monthly cash grant is welcome, but the numbers of beneficiaries are negligible in comparison to the scale of the problem,” Hopwood said.
He said this while spelling out the submissions from nine CSOs during the mid-term budget review consultation with the Ministry of Finance and the NPC.
Several CSOs also expressed concerns about the worsening housing and sanitation situation in informal settlements across the country. They are calling for a direct fund for local authorities to subsidise the price of serviced land and make it more accessible.
In addition, the CSOs argued for greater support for the informal economy and SMEs.
“We need to know much more about how the informal economy functions,” said Hopwood.
He added that “more consultation about the necessity of large infrastructure projects could help us avoid the creation of white elephants when those funds could be much better spent elsewhere.”
Also speaking during the consultation was Finance Minister Iipumbu Shiimi, who commended the local CSOs, saying they are becoming more dynamic.
“We’re harvesting these ideas to work on them so that by the end of the year, we will have harvested all the ideas that we believe we can accommodate in the next financial year,” Shiimi said during the discussion.
Source: The Namibia Press Agency