By: Andrew Kathindi

The City of Windhoek plans to open a holding company that will deal with construction and land servicing, Windhoek mayor Job Amupanda has revealed.

According to Amupanda, the holding company is the result of a council resolution following a four-day land and housing workshop in Midgard with the aim in of cutting out middlemen.

“We have taken a decision to establish a hundred percent City owned company called Nova Actus Holding PTY LTD by council resolution.

“The process has already started, the name is reserved. Over the coming weeks, it should be registered. Under Nova Actus Holding, there should be a subsidiary that just deals with land and housing so we can get away from the bureaucracy of middlemen. We have resolved to do things on our own.”

He further stated that Nova Actus Holding subsidiaries will deal with both construction and land servicing. He said the holding company will have a number of other subsidiaries.

“Within a period of six months, a subsidiary under Nova Actus Holding will submit a funding proposal to council for consideration inclusive of insurance for low cost housing. There are some revenue sources we need to tap into and one of those is housing insurance.”

This comes as Amupanda has further said that the municipality is currently exploring ways to exit a number of Public Private Partnerships (PPP), which he says have failed to deliver.

“We are agreeing to assist developers, but this PPP thing has been very problematic. At the workshop we discovered that the PPP is supposed to be a pilot, but some end up having ten.”

According to the mayor, council is currently discussing the Otjomuise Extension 10 PPP in order to see if an early exit can be reached.

The holding company is part of a number of resolutions agreed on at the workshop, which Amupanda said will be adopted as resolutions at the next council meeting.

Part of that includes compiling a waiting list for the council-funded Affordable Housing Programme and to record such a list on an affordable housing database, which will be publicly monitored.

The mayor also said council has resolved to implement a “zero tolerance on land invasion in line with council resolution 30/02/2021.”

This as a number of land occupation incidents have occurred in the city since the start of the year.