Making A Better World - Milton Louw

(First Published in New Era Newspaper - 4 June 2014) Recently a family member of mine woke up to the reality of how cold it really is this winter in the capital. At the end of April the City of Windhoek came to cut his power supply because of arrears in the family water and electricity account. The amount of arrears had accumulated over a period of twelve months as the family did not every time pay the full amount due. After around a year, the family was faced with just under N$3,000 they had to pay before electricity could be re-connected. A friend in Windhoek recently came to the end of their rental contract of a year and presumed that the contract would automatically be renewed with a possible slight increase from her present N$ 5,000 per month. Imagine her surprise when the landlady sent her the new contract with the rental agreement now being N$ 6,200 per month. This is a month on month increase of N$ 1,200 or 25%. The friend and her family earns around N$ 12,000 in total a...

(First Published in New Era Newspaper - 11 June 2014) Last week Wednesday, my first consumer column for New Era appeared and I was very pleased when a fiend indicated that he had seen my column. I was however very quickly deflated when he added that he had glanced through the article but was not actually sure what it was about. After some light questioning, I realised in fact that he had only read the heading and perhaps the first paragraph. This led me to question (for at least five minutes anyway), why do I bother writing about consumer issues if not even my friends were reading it? Immediately though my common sense returned and reminded me that I am, and always will be, a consumer activist. This led me to the topic of today’s column, namely “What is a consumer activist?” A consumer activist according to the dictionary meaning is “a person whose job is to protect the rights of customers, for example by giving advice, testing products, or trying to improve laws relating to ...

(First Published in New Era Newspaper - 4 June 2014) Is it possible for the Government of Namibia, through the Bank of Namibia, to wipe all our bad credit information off the blacklist? I do not want to have the debt written off, but rather just have every consumer in Namibia start with a clean slate as far as their credit record is concerned. I believe this will help address the issue of access to credit for those Namibian that can afford credit. Many of these consumers may have paid their debts in full – and are in a position to afford credit – but their access is blocked by negative credit information still being stored on their credit record. This writing off of the “bad history” will ensure that consumers who can afford credit can be able to access it. It is presently difficult to get credit, it is expensive and this holds back growth. Access to a sustainable credit market is essential to all our development goals, especially Vision 2030. The Bank of Namibia (BoN) announced...