… lament cap on church attendance numbers
Andrew Kathindi
Churches are crying for their share of the N$700 million COVID-19 related stimulus package announced by the Social Security Commission (SSC) and the Ministry of Finance in April.
Secretary-General of the Council of Churches of Namibia (CCN), Ludwig Beukes, said he is disappointed that no provisions were made for the church despite the fact that the church employs around 5,000-10,000 people countrywide that depend on the income that has been lost in the last few months since churches closed their doors on 17 March.
“It’s a whole thing about how state views the church, maybe not as an important stakeholder. But looking at the lives of the nation, church plays an important role. Our people, even those that don’t practice the faith, in this country are church related. When there is a death in the family they look to church. The same applies to weddings, and counseling,” Beukes told Windhoek Observer.
He lamented that the church was left out even though church members in certain categories pay taxes and social security contributions. He said the CCN has 16 member churches (denominations) with nearly 1.6 million church goers across the country.
“We feel very strongly that that conversation still needs to be taken up and to engage government. We are talking about people who are suffering. It’s not so much about the institution, but those employees with families. We have a church with 470 full time staff alone, so we need to engage each other because at the end of the day, the politicians and lawmakers belong to our churches.”
The CCN SG also lamented the 50 people threshold per service as being inadequate as there are churches with enough space to host more and still adhere to social distancing regulations.
“We made a proposal to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) saying there are shops whose square meters are being measured to set a limit of how many people can enter. We were saying, let individual churches apply the same principles to set their number based on the square meters available and then the police can come and inspect and set the limit on the condition to stick to all the health protocols. But they came up with this blanket solution when we were still in stage 2 to not allow more than 10 people,” he said.
Beukeus also observed that lawmakers appear to be more interested in institutions like breweries, of which the Namibia Breweries Limited (NBL) reported tax expense of N$155 million in June last year, however he argued the government fails to recognize the consequences of the alcohol industry as government is spending more than what they are getting.
This comes as City Police Chief, Abraham Kanime said that he had received multiple phone calls from his officers complaining about a rise in fights per day after the prohibition on alcohol was lifted.
Sophia Belete-Tekie of the Baha’i faith said there was a need to give support to the essential efforts being made to protect the health and welfare of all.
Meanwhile Dolly Nengushe from the Association of Charismatic and Pentecostal Churches of Namibia said there was a need to empower church members who have lost jobs due to retrenchments in recent months, most brought on by COVID-19, to financially take care of themselves.
“We have actually started putting things in place, in terms of the business plans and how we want to go about it in terms of engaging the communities to start their own gardening behind their yard. Everybody belongs to the church, and if we really can mobilize and educate the church on agricultural crop production,” she said.
