As Namibia votes on the provisions of the country’s 2016 Appropriation Bill (budget), Councillor Uapendura Mupya is calling for an increase in the funds of the Prime Minister’s office in order to accommodate unemployed Namibians in the drought relief programme. The councillor’s argument honed in on the fact that a lot of Namibian workers are out of jobs and on the streets – with children to support – because of the effects of the drought on farms.

The severe drought which Namibia is experiencing is causing the agriculture-reliant Southern African country a dangerous amount of food insecurity. Presently, over 550,000 Namibians in the country are affected by the lack of agricultural harvests and their only hope is relief programmes. The Drought Relief Food Programme was launched by the government in different parts of Namibia in April 2015.

Currently, Namibia is in the process of transitioning between this drought relief programme, which ended on March 31, 2016, and the start of a new one for this year. Meanwhile, the programme continues to provide Namibians in need with food stock and financial aid. However, there are significant challenges that the programme remains faced with in terms of organisation and distribution in certain regions, such as the Kunene region which largely consists of the Namib Desert.

According to Mupya, the creation of a local supply market could help to mitigate the challenges of organisation and distribution of food aid while also addressing the issue of unemployment. Mupya’s suggestion to increase the Prime Minister’s budget seeks to provide jobs for unemployed people in the proposed supply market, by placing them in the transportation and regular delivery gaps that prevent the drought relief system from reaching its full potential.

In addition to this, a much need supplementation of the crops that farmers manage to yield with livestock could also provide an avenue for job provision. The amount of food that families receive mostly involves grains and is hardly balanced in diet. Furthermore, the amount of food available for distribution is insufficient when placed against a backdrop of the number of Namibians who need food aid.

Therefore, the idea is to meet the stunted agricultural production in Namibia halfway by ensuring that farmers who also rear livestock can get their products to the market. This can be achieved by eliminating the challenge of feeding the livestock which Councillor Melania Ndjago agrees with. She opines that supplying farmers who also rear cattle with animal feed (mostly grass) for their cattle which they can afford would witness livestock in the supply market.

However, to make animal feed affordable thereby realising the dream of providing job opportunities in Namibia and ultimately handling the drought relief system adequately, the Namibian government will have to consider the advice of Councillors Mupya and Ndjago concerning an increment in the proposed budget.

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