Hertta-Maria Amutenja
Independent Patriots for Change Leader, Panduleni Itula yesterday said it is risky for Namibia to depend on foreign expertise. He said this during the daily Windhoek Observer live broadcast, in which he further added that the country’s dependence on foreigners and their skills is an indication of a failing government.
“Our reliance on foreign skills is extremely dangerous. It is not only denying young people employment, but it is also denying us the necessary revenue that we need to put in our coffers for which we can extract revenue for our essential services. It is absolutely embarrassing,” he said.
He said that when he becomes the head of State these issues will be a thing of the past.
“These are signs of a crumbling regime that is not going to wake up soon to the fact that it is going to fall apart,” he said.
Itula was reacting to allegations that the Namibian Cabinet was forced to find alternative venues for its regular meetings because of a situation of disrepair at State House as a result of international sanctions against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
International Relations Minister, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, said she cannot say whether the country depends too much on foreign expertise although she stressed that Namibia is a part of the global village and it does not deal with issues in isolation.
“We also want Namibians to receive knowledge from other countries and to bring such knowledge back home. We cannot isolate ourselves and say we only want Namibians,” she said.
Itula was of the opinion that Namibia has enough resources to support its population but that there is no legal framework in place to regulate all the resources and he also alluded to the phenomenon of people that work for state-owned enterprises being accused of stealing from the government’s wealth and resources.
“We have sufficient resources for our population to rely on in Namibia. The biggest challenge is the absence of a legal framework on how to manage all these.
From negotiating an Exclusive Prospecting Licences (EPL) to actually getting all the byproducts of the resources.
This is only a ripple of what has been taking place in the government. The looting of our resources and wealth by individuals of state-owned enterprises has been going on.
This one is just one of them.
