A RESIDENT of Okahandja submitted a complaint with the Anti-Corruption Commission today calling for an investigation into alleged corrupt land deals implicating councillors and officials at the town.
Johannes Gaseb says he filed his complaint as an individual concerned about alleged corruption with regards to land sales and allocation at the town.
He wants the ACC to investigate land deals that took place between 2014 and 2020.
During this time, the urban and rural development ministry had imposed a moratorium on the sale of land at Okahandja due to alleged corruption.
An internal investigation commissioned by the ministry was conducted, but a final investigation report is yet to be made public.
Gaseb claims, however, that several plots were sold to municipal officials, councillors, their friends, developers and some Chinese nationals during that period - despite the ban on land sales.
Gaseb further accuses a municipal official of occupying unserviced land without following due procedure.
He says the official in question has been intimidating residents who want to clear and develop the plots allocated to them after the moratorium was lifted in July this year.
“It is against this background . . . we urge the ACC to conduct an in-depth investigation of how the land was sold between 2014 and 28 July 2020,” he says.
The ban on the sale of land was recently lifted by the new minister of urban and rural development, Erastus Uutoni, without addressing corruption allegations involving past land deals and politicians.