Martin Endjala
Popular Democratic Movement Member of Parliament, Maximalliant Katjimune is disenchanted with the government’s high operational expenditure over the development budget, citing that this practice is one of the main contributing factors to youth unemployment in the country.
“The operational expenses are always more than the developmental budget. How are we going to achieve tangible development if in all sectors of the operational expenditure always far exceeds the development budget?” he asked.
Katjimune said it is high time that government starts looking at reducing the operational budgets in all ministries, given the fact that most of the operational budgets are for salaries.
He was speaking in the National Assembly, during the motivation budget of the Ministry of Sports Youth and National Services tabled by the Minister,Agnes Tjongarero.
He said that for too long, the Ministry has been undermined and neglected when it comes to the allocation of funds.
“Given the task bestowed on it to ensure that the plight of young people in the country is fully catered for, I believe that the Ministry should be receiving more budget allocations,” he said.
The Ministry received a budget allocation of about N$473.2 million and a total of N$1.4 billion over the Mid-Term Expenditure Framework period, of which about N$70 million is for development projects and N$403 million is for operational expenditure.
This allocation marks a steep increment of over N$140 million compared to the N$330.9 million the ministry got in the last financial year.
Based on this, Katjimune stated that it is a clear indication that the ministry is underfunded, hence its inability to fully carry out developmental projects that can enable young people to become self-employed.
“Despite the high allocation of the operational budget, most of it normally goes to salaries, which is a concern as the ministry is now left to supplement the budget by selling potatoes and other things, to bring in funds for it to remain operational throughout,” he said.
Projects such as the Rietfontein training centre in Grootfontein under the control of the National Youth Services he said, were supposed to be generating more capital than they currently are.
The rate of production has also decreased due to a lack of funding, Katjimune said.
According to the lawmaker, the Ministry’s budget theme aims to redouble its efforts to meaningfully bring about youth empowerment and sports development.
He however added that this is observed in other ministries.
“This gives you a clear indication about where government’s priority lies, and why the government is failing in uplifting young people,” Katjimune opined.
He further added that this is attributed to a lack of monitoring and evaluating systems in place, to measure the level of effectiveness and shortfalls of budget allocations within the ministries.
Another PDM Parliamentarian, Inna Hengari reiterated that the lack of funding is also necessitated by the lack of monitoring and evaluating instruments to really see how the allocated money is being used. She has since called on the youth Ministry to capitalize on this to paint a better picture of the ministry.
