Staff Reporter

The Ministry of Urban and Rural Development (MURD) and the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA), launched the Namibia Housing Information system (HIS) last week in Windhoek.

According to NSA press statement, the purpose of HIS is to centralize housing and land statistics in the country. “The objective is to ensure that all land and housing statistics are entered into a centralized database in order to have such statistics coordinated and available instantly”, reads the press statement.

The system will be comprised of four modules: housing stock, land use stock, housing needs and informal settlements. These modules will enable the system to identify dwelling units that are occupied or available for occupation by households including structures shacks, flats, apartments and backyard structures.

It will also provide statistics for economic and cultural activities such as agricultural, residential, industrial, recreational, mining and quarrying, amongst others. It will also capture those areas where groups of housing
units have been constructed on land that has no water, sanitation and electricity services and the occupants have no legal claim to occupy the land.

Talking at the launch, Statistician General Alex Shimuafeni said the system will have the ability to collect data from other systems to keep it live in an automated manner reducing human error, duplication of work, and reducing human capital to manage and administer the system.

The system will be on a pilot phase for one year before it will be fully ready for public use. Piloting will include training of system users, transfer old data pertaining to housing and land applications onto the system, and ensuring that all new applications will be recorded through the housing information system.

news@newswave.com.na