GROOTFONTEIN MUNICIPALITY, “Moving to greater Heights “

How far has it come: Grootfontein is a beautiful town, during spring the jacaranda and flamboyant trees flower, are bathing the town in a swathe of purple, blue and red hues.
When the Municipal Council decided to send people to the informal areas there was no toilet or electricity in the area. The informal area called Blikkie-dorp was a place for people who wanted to resident in Grootfontein but did not have proper accommodation.

There are 450 plots in the informal settlement and in each household is there a maximum of eight people 15 families residing at each plot. This comes to approximately 7000 inhabitants in the informal settlement known as ‘Blikkies-dorp”.

In the past the Municipality noted that men, women, children and even the disabled were using the bushes when nature calls. Whilst women used to collect wood in nearby bushes and end up getting raped or sexually assaulted and get bitten by the snakes.

The community of Blikkies-dorp is challenged with high unemployment rate which give the council enormous financial constrain and Council need to source extra financial resources in order to provide basic services to the informal areas. Therefore provision of basic services takes long to deliver.

How far has it progressed: The Municipal Council took a decision to embarking on assisting the poor especially women living in informal settlements by providing adequate sanitation facilities such as ablution units.

The availability of ablution units are valuable in educating the youth, why? it is necessary to use a toilet and to protect our precious environment. To address this problem, council than budgeted about N$8 million to expand the informal settlement area in order to accommodate all the families and well as to construct toilet units that can accommodate all gender including the disabled.

20 units to date had been completed on the cost of N$1.5 million and there is still 115 units to be completed in the coming year. Blikkiesdorp has been expanded with 300 additional plots.

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