Nampower management should be fired

Namibian Economist - FRIDAY, 09 APRIL 2010 11:03

Written by Nyasha Nyaungwa

The Namibia Protection Group (NPG) has called for the sacking of the managing director of Nampower, Paulinus Shilamba and his management. The call follows an announcement by the power utility last week that it will be seeking a 35% tariff increment from the Electricity Control Board of Namibia (ECB).

In an interview, founder of the NPG, Milton Louw said the proposed 35% electricity increase was reason enough for Shilamba to be fired.
“Surely we can expect better management that realises the importance of electricity in the daily lives of our people. This kind of increase will lead to a decrease in economic activity, and job losses. This is reason enough to ask for his (Shilamba’s) replacement.


“The MD and his management must be tackled directly. They are responsible for the long-term planning and if this has gone wrong they must take the blame. Pity this will probably not happen,” Louw added.

Instead of increasing, electricity tariffs, Louw implored the government to urgently finalise the Kudu Gas Project.
“We must get the Kudu Gas Project going now. This project never seems to get off the ground. Second, let’s build a nuclear power station (explained fully in my book) that is a compromise on our supplying uranium,” Louw said.

Contacted for comment, officials at the ECB refused to comment on the matter. An official from the PR department who refused to identify himself could only say that the issue of whether a 35% increase will be granted or not will be based on the outcome of the consultation process that is scheduled to end this Friday, 9 April.

“If the majority of the stakeholders are against the proposed tariff increase, a compromise will have to be reached as we basically have two groups to protect, namely: Nampower and the consumers,” the official said.

How to get FB without accessing the site (your company blocked it)

*NOT an original post of Milton Louw*


Just to help those of us who are not so techie to get FB:

I follow it through a feed reader (in my case, Google Reader).

Besides the obvious benefits to this, one great side effect is that you never, ever see the output of applications (e.g., quiz results) or the other useless noise like "so-and-so is now friends with someone else you already know". The only drawback I've found is that you also don't see notifications about photos that your friends have uploaded. (You do see links that they post, however: just not Facebook-hosted photos. It's a bizarre omission.)

Anyway, I just had to explain to someone how to accomplish this feat, which made me realize how completely non-obvious Facebook has made this. Finding these feeds is a complete pain in the ass. They've really gone out of their way to hide the URLs you need to use.

So. You have to subscribe to three or four different feeds.

Posts: Find the Posts feed by going to http://www.facebook.com/posted.php. On the upper right of the page is a gray box, and at the bottom of that box is a link entitled "My Friends' Links" with the RSS logo next to it. Copy that URL. Subscribe to it in your feed reader. This is the RSS URL for any links and (external) images that your friends post.

Notes: Find the Notes feed by going to http://www.facebook.com/notes.php and repeating the above. This is the RSS URL for things that your friends post via the "Notes" app, which is (I guess) the more blog-like way of posting long things to Facebook.

Notifications: Find the Notifications feed by going to http://www.facebook.com/notifications.php and repeating the above. This is the RSS URL for things like "so-and-so commented on your status". You might not care to subscribe to this one because you can get all of these kind of notifications in email.

Status Updates: This is the RSS URL for the "What are you doing?" Twitter-like part of Facebook. This is the one you probably care about, and it is trickier, because Facebook no longer links to the feed URL! Nice one guys. You have to construct this URL by editing one of the above URLs. E.g., take the "Notes" URL and change the part of the URL that says "friends_notes" to "friends_status". Keep the parts of the URL before and after that, including the magic numbers at the end.

Fire Nampower MD!

This is completely unacceptable! Nampower loses money on political decisions to support Zimbabwe and we, the Consumers, must now pay the price.

Not only should we reject this increase, we should demand the heads of the management at the company.

Nampower is looking at INCREASING ELECTRICITY by 35%.

If the public have anything against this increase they can send an e-mail to the following address: -

mayame@ecb.org (ECB is the Electricity Control Board of Namibia)

Please note that this email should reach them before the 6th of April (next Tuesday).

Please forward this address to all Namibians in your address book.

World Consumer Rights Day 2010 - 'Our money, our rights'

The global consumer movement will once again unite for a day of action on 15 March 2010. The theme for World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) 2010 is ‘Our money, our rights’ and will highlight consumer issues in relation to financial services.

The Namibia Consumer Protection Group is presently working at attaining membership of Consumer International.

Consumers International (CI) is the world federation of consumer groups that, working together with its members, serves as the only independent and authoritative global voice for consumers.

With over 220 member organisations in 115 countries, CI is building a powerful international movement to help protect and empower consumers everywhere.

Founded in 1960, the organisation is now needed more than ever. This modern movement is essential to secure a fair safe and sustainable future for consumers in a global marketplace increasingly dominated by international corporations.

Campaigns and programmes
CI campaigns on the international issues that matter to consumers everywhere. This means achieving real changes in government policy and corporate behaviour while raising awareness of consumer rights and responsibilities.

In campaigning for the rights of consumers across the world, CI seeks to hold corporations to account and demands government action to put consumer concerns first.

To this end, CI is committed to acting as a global watchdog: campaigning against any behaviour that threatens, ignores or abuses the principles of consumer protection.

CI is doing this by:
* Working with national member organisations to influence governments, highlight marketplace abuses and raise grass roots support.
* Pressing consumer concerns through official representation global bodies such as the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), International Organization of Standardization (ISO), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
* Raising awareness about purchasing choices through clear, engaging and accessible communication.

Brotherhood among us (1987)

Can’t we all come and meet each other
And no matter what colour we may be
Be able to show we love one another
And then together we’ll stand, you and me
The leaders of Tomorrow,
Planning for what is to come
Otherwise there will be lots of needless sorrow
Over killing which are quite dumb.

So come closer now and grab my hand
And we’ll accept each other as brothers
And then together we’ll be able to stand
To show our Father and Mothers
We want to plan for a common future
No matter what our race, colour or culture.