The new Keetmanshoop town council is unperturbed by the ultimatum put to it by the Electricity Control Board (ECB) to cooperate with the electricity distributor Southern Electricity Company (Selco) again. Under Mayor Simon Petrus Tiboth, the council unilaterally cancelled the contract with the South African company last week following community protests after power prices increased and households hat to pay for expensive new metering devices. The previous Council signed a 15-year contract with Selco without consulting the residents or the relevant line ministries. This week Dr Siseho Simasiku of the ECB "advised" Keetmanshoop to work together with Selco again as the company was busy obtaining a court order against the municipality. Mayor Tiboth however vowed "to fight on".

Namibia’s budget will be even more stretched when it has to contribute to the feasibility studies and construction of the large hydropower project near the Inga Falls on the Congo River to cost a staggering N$ 45 billion. An agreement was signed in Tuesday in Botswana.

Five power utilities participate: SNEL of the DRC, ENE (Angola), NamPower (Namibia), BPC (Botswana), and Eskom of South Africa. Each utility will own 20% of the share capital of the joint venture company WestCor, which is registered in Botswana to fund the engineering and financial studies, and build, own, and operate the hydro power station. Each utility contributes US$ 100,000 (N$650 000) as start-up capital to fund the first phase of the studies. The project will harness the power for the five countries and ultimately to the whole of the SADC sub-region and costs about US$ 7 billion (N$ 45 billion) and the funding comes mainly through NEPAD. The feasibility studies are expected to cost approximately US$ 8 million (N$ 51,2 million). The pre-feasibility studies will commence immediately, followed by full feasibility studies. Construction is planned to commence in 2008. In addition, WestCor will also engineer the hydroelectric potential of the Kwanza Basin in northern Angola estimated to be 6,000 MW.

The Ohlthaver & List Group will lay off 122 workers at 2 of its farms, 104 at Midgard and 18 at the neighbouring Asgard-Schenckswerder Farm before the end of this year. The school for farm children at Midgard and the hostel will be closed on 9 December 2005. The "Sonop" settlement on Midgard for farm workers and their families will also be closed down. This formed part of the group’s strategic growth plan announced during July 2005. The plan entailed plans to invest N$832 million in Namibia’s economy, divest from entrepreneurial businesses, and re-focus on core business activities. At least Asgard farm is up for sale, but according to the law, each farm on the market must first be offered to the ministry of lands. Once the ministry inspects the farm and finds it unsuitable for resettlement, it issues the owners a waiver certificate and then the farm can be sold to a private person. - The beef-farming activities at Asgard-Schenckswerder will end on 31 October 2005 and affects 18 employees. "O&L believes the farm can be best run by individual farmers according to traditional farming methods", says its public relations officer, Patrick Hashingola. - "It is still to be mutually decided between the employees, unions and company as to where and when the affected employees will be relocated", according to Hashingola. - Midgard Lodge was operating under harsh economic conditions and made severe losses, he added. "We just couldn’t absorb the losses any longer. Consequently, we had to come up with a sustainable, interim operational plan to save Midgard Lodge from what looked like a definite, definite closure". The company said all affected employees and unions representing them, were consulted since June 2005.