The Minister of Urban and Rural Development, James Sankwasa, has officially dissolved the Katima Mulilo Town Council as gazetted on August 15.

Only two former councillors from IPC and NDP attended the announcement, while the Swapo Party and PDM were absent.

Sankwasa explained that the removal of the council members was as a result of failure to perform their duties and also made reference to alienation of land, which must be done with the written approval of the minister.

"Katima Mulilo town council went and exchanged land for vehicles. Land is a fixed property that appreciates in value over the years; vehicles, quad bikes, and drones – whatever you name them – depreciate, so the two can never tally in terms of value, because even if we take a vehicle at N$9,000,000 today and the price of the same land is also N$900,000, after a year or two, the land will be over a million and the vehicle will be around 500. I also gave a directive to Katima Mulilo Town Council concerning human resources issues where issues that could be solved internally by the council have landed up at arbitration court where money had to be paid, and my clear directive was that this matter be handled internally by the council, not externally by the lawyers, but Katima Town Council went ahead and paid N$60,000 for lawyers, something that I have tried to say we don't have money for in the local authority, so let' not waste the little that we have."

He further stressed that until the time that he appoints an administrator, he will be responsible for the council, with the chief executive officer reporting directly to the minister.

Sankwasa acknowledged, though not every council member took part in unlawful decisions, the council is one in the absence of minutes.

The minister will be in the Zambezi Region until next week with officials from the head office to handle issues at the council.