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Namibia's president blames apartheid for over-bloated civil sevice

Xinhua, February 28, 2017 Adjust font size:

Namibia's President Hage Geingob blamed the apartheid era civil service structure for the country's current over-bloated administration.

There are currently close to 100, 000 public servants in Namibia where the salary bill was more than 23 billion Namibian dollars (about 1.8 billion U.S. dollars) in 2014.

Geingob told State House staff Monday that the government has no choice but to employ a number of people from the apartheid era as part of the reconciliation process.

"If we are to downsize now, we will end up sending many people into the streets and add to the already high number of unemployed people," Geingob said.

He also said there were very few black Namibian managers during apartheid era and that there was no way the government could have dismissed all the whites in top positions.

"What we need to do now is to improve our performance and output. This year, let us defeat the naysayers with success and let us defeat them with hard work."

When Geingob took over from former president Hifikepunye Pohamba in 2015, he appointed five special presidential advisors.

These appointments have been at the center of debate with some economic analysts saying the advisors are costing the government a lot of money.

Geingob, however, defended the appointments Monday saying that there is nothing new in appointing advisors.

"The way people are talking about advisors, it is like a new thing, but I am not the one who introduced it. Presidential advisors have always been part of our structure," he said, adding that the advisors have different competencies required to drive Namibia forward. Endit