The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economy, Industry, Public Administration and Planning has called for suitable land to be made available to initiate phase two of the Neckertal Dam Irrigation Scheme.

This comes after the committee concluded an oversight inspection visit to the site of the Neckertal Dam. 

The government has acquired 19 thousand hectares of land at the dam for irrigation purposes, at a cost of about N$20 million. 

Currently, a consultant is on site designing an irrigation system, assessing land suitability and conducting an environmental feasibility study. 

The work is expected to be completed within 18 months. 

300 of the total 19.000 hectares have already been identified as suitable for irrigation. 

The committee chairperson, Iipumbu Shiimi, and committee member Willem Amutenya reminded government officials of the importance of executing projects timeously, saying people's livelihoods depend on this. 

"Our appeal to our colleagues of the Ministry of Agriculture is really to start with that phase while we are waiting for the rest of the land to be sampled because we want to see jobs in this region, we need to see Namibians be employed, and we need to see more economic activities in this region because that is going to be transformative."

"When we are talking about 18 months to 54 months, you are simply saying next year there is nothing happening on site. The whole of this year, the whole of next year – nothing is happening. Honestly speaking, we can't wait any longer for that when we have this investment." 

The government allocated N$10 million during the current financial year for the second phase of the Neckartal Dam Irrigation Scheme. 

Felix Ndinamwene is an engineer at the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform. 

"That money we could not spend this financial year, which is ending now, on the 1st of March. The reason being we had a protracted procurement process for this consultant because we ended up going to review for us to clear this appointment. So since last April last year we have been dealing with dispute resolution."

Ndinamwene further reported that part of the money was invested into the green scheme projects. 

Located along Keetmanshoop's west, Neckartal Dam is the largest dam. 

Currently, the dam is 96% full, equivalent to 820 million cubic metres of water.