Windhoek residents will have to pay 26.5 percent more for water from 1 July, which leaves even less money in their pockets. With Namibia the driest country south of the Equator and a low average rainfall of some 300 mm per annum, the minister of agriculture says it is expensive for the government to provide Namibians with water. No free water was available, Minister Helmut Angula told the National Assembly on Tuesday in a ministerial statement, neither was water supply privatised. He made clear NamWater as a parastatal had to supply water at cost recovery on commercial principles. Various water supply projects to cost some N$ 100 million but could only be realised if funds were available, Angula said. He lashed out at rural people, who had up to 2000 cattle and had sugar plantations near their houses in rural areas, but refused to pay for the water they use. For the poor, a system would be worked out, Angula announced, to subsidise them. At 25 litres per day, the cost for the poor and pensioners would come to N$ 3.75 per month taking N$ 5.00 per cubic metre as average. However, Angula said, cattle consumed about 45 litres per day and 500 cattle would consume 675 000 litres per month coming to N$ 3 375 per month for rich people in communal areas, but they did not want to pay. There were many rural people who owned 500 and more cattle, he added. It was time they realised they had to sell some of their cattle, instead of threatening ministerial officials when they told them to sell surplus cattle, a seemingly irritate Minister Angula told MP’s.