By:Justicia Shipena
The institute for public policy research (IPPR) in its local and regional government annual assessment found that councils located in economically developed areas tend to perform better.
IPPR on Thursday launched the first edition covering 01 September 2020 to 30 August 2022.
IPPR research associate Kitty Mcgirr said questionnaires were emailed to the local and regional councils at the beginning of the research period with an initial internal deadline of two weeks.
“This deadline was later extended to allow for a total of five weeks for councils to gather their responses,” she said.
Another, observation emanating from this year’s assessment according to IPPR is the evident correlation between levels of development across the regions and local authority areas surveyed.
“A general pattern was observed whereby councils located in more economically developed areas tended to perform better across all ten assessment criteria with a few notable exceptions,” said Mcgirr.
Mcgirr added that some councils managed to perform relatively well despite their experiences of serious cash flow issues, resource limitations and other unfavourable circumstances.
Currently, Namibia has 14 regional councils and 57 unitary local authorities.
However, Mcgirr said only 16 out of the 32 representing 50% local authorities and regiob\nal councils under review sent emails to the researcher confirming their receipt of the IPPR’s participation request letter along with its corresponding questionnaire.
The researcher also received several phone calls and emails from various local and regional government employees requesting extensions to complete their submissions.
“However, only five completed questionnaires were received by the end of the research period amounting to a disappointing response rate of 15%,” said the researcher.
The completed questionnaires were received from Windhoek Municipality, Walvis Bay Municipality, Grootfontein Municipality, Rehoboth Town Council, and Erongo regional council the assessment paper showed.
Mcgirr said the difficulties experienced by the IPPR in chasing responses to their requests for access to public information begs the question of how quickly, ordinary citizens are receiving responses to their own queries and complaints.
“Councils are advised to improve the quality of their customer service by imposing measurable targets for cutting response times and inviting the public to participate in surveys to share their feedback on how governing bodies can better serve the needs of their constituents,” said Mcgirr.
On, building an online presence the research institution says local authorities and regional councils should prioritise the establishment of their online presence.
“Even better, councils should work on producing more live streams of council meetings to ensure that citizens who do not reside in regional capitals are still able to attend and participate in these events virtually.”
In addition, she said out of the 32 local authorities and regional councils surveyed no council was awarded an unqualified score by the office of the auditor general in their most recent audit reports.
According to Mcgirr, this underlines the necessity for all employees working in councils’ finance departments to undergo the International Public Sector Accounting Standards training to achieve an acceptable level of financial accounting standards going forward.
She also said when it comes to budgeting, they found a recurring criticism raised by members of the public against local and regional governments on lack of fiscal transparency.
She stated that these criticisms are often vindicated by reports of corrupt dealings with some elected representatives.
In this vein, IPPR recommends that councils put these claims to bed by fostering a culture of accountable spending.
“This could include organising and effectively advertising public budget consultations in as many constituencies as is feasible and making targeted appeals for input to local civil society groups and the private sector,” said IPPR,
Mcgirr stressed that a commonality binding many local authorities and regional councils in the wake of the pandemic is their considerable debts owed to water and electricity suppliers for unpaid utility bills.
Namibia introduced free water provision in informal settlements at the beginning of 2020, when the pandemic hit Namibia.
This had government paying about N$12 million for the first three months of the lockdown.
In this assessment, the researcher finds that the dire financial straits largely stem from this directive of free water.
“Consequently, local authorities are experiencing increasingly more frequent water cut-offs due to their inability to purchase water supplies while also honouring debt repayments.”
Councils in developed areas perform better – IPPR
