Making A Better World - Milton Louw

I start with me. I am Dyslexic Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read,[1] and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension, and/or rapid naming

While doing research, I came across the website of these submissions by students at UNAM,  (http://wwwisis.unam.na/theses). Among the papers I discovered a paper entitled “Consumer Protection And The Legality Of Itc. A Compartative Study Between Namibia, South Africa” presented by N. Boonzaaier (Student Number 200645838) with his supervisor being K. Kangueehi. Boonzaaier in his abstract states… “Credit sales are a common occurrence and originated before the Roman era. As time passed, especially after the industrial revolution of the 19th century (which made available consumer goods on a large scale), an increasing number of contracts of purchase and sale were concluded in terms of which payment of the purchase price would take place at a later date or over a period of time in the future. It is an incontestable fact that some ‘purchases on credit’ constitute a risk. Not only for the credit grantor, but even more so for the consumer. . It is common knowledge that the use of...

In last month’s Consumer News Namibia Magazine, I wrote about the unit pricing on shelves. This refers to the practice of indicating the prices per unit (kilogramme, litre, single product in bilk packs, etc.) I had a chance to travel around Namibia during the past few weeks I was fortunate to travel around the country taking tourists to places such as Swakopmund, Walvis Bay and Okahandja. While visiting the towns I took the opportunity to visit the most common shopping places. I noticed with some joy that there are a few shops who already label their products for the convenience of the consumer. I must commend Shoprite on having almost all their products labelled with the unit price clearly indicated, while Pick & Pay has around half of their products labelled – it is perhaps just laziness at the IT department to fill in all the fields correctly in their central system as the labels already have place to indicate the unit price?  In my cursory examination at OK and Fruit and V...

Many countries around the world commemorate 15 March as the World Consumer Day. This day has a historic importance as it was on this day 1962, when the Bill for Consumer Rights was moved in the US Congress. This year, the theme of World Consumer Day is “Consumer Justice Now”. As Namibians we must push for our legislature to put in place a CPA as soon as possible as good consumer protection is not only about legislation, but it can also deliver justice, create a fairer society and even save lives. The United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection (UNGCP) act as an international reference point of the consumer movement and can be understood to be •                    the right to the satisfaction of basic needs •                    the right to safety •     ...

When I started writing this book in 2009, it began as a way of collecting my various commentaries on diverse subjects within Namibia. As I started putting them together, a theme started emerging and I remembered back to the first day of Independence in 1990 when I raised the Namibia flag for the first time over our capital Windhoek. I swore to myself that day: that I would do everything from my side to make this the best country to live in. This has led me to look at what is the Oath of Allegiance for Namibia. The only one I have found is the one prescribed for foreign nationals wishing to become Namibians in the Namibian Citizenship Act. Thus I have formulated my own: I…………, ID Number …….., presently residing ……… in the……… District of the …… Region, do hereby declare on oath that I will be faithful to the Republic of Namibia, observe its laws, promote all that which will advance it and oppose all that may harm it. So Help Me God. The singing of the National Anthem and th...

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The Namibian - 7 March 2013 What does it mean to be miserable? The dictionary defines miserable as “causing extreme discomfort or unhappiness for example in a miserable situation”.  This past week Namibia was ranked as the 7 th most Miserable Country in the World. This rating is based upon the misery index, a crude economic measure created by Arthur Orkum, that sums up a country's unemployment and inflation rates to assess conditions on the ground (the higher the number, the more miserable a country is). The reasoning: most citizens understand the pain of a high jobless rate and the soaring price of goods. Our Misery index score is 57, based upon our Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) of 5.8% per year and our unemployment rate of 51.2%. The findings further state that Namibia is “heavily dependent of the its mineral resources, Namibia exports a lot of diamonds, uranium, and gold. However, the mining sector employs only 3 per cent of the country's labour force. Since there...