By Victor Angula |

The Development Bank of Namibia (DBN)’s office at Ongwediva has been operating at a snail’s pace in processing applications for funding due to staff shortages.

Information gathered by Omutumwa shows that a front-desk official who does the first steps in entering information of the application into the DBN’s system, a process referred to as “capturing,” has been on maternity leave.

Her absence has led to long delays in the processing of the applications received during the past few months.

“My application was submitted many weeks ago,” said a local businessman who spoke to Omutumwa on condition of anonymity. “But until now I have not received any communication from anyone to acknowledge receipt of my application.”

The businessman said that the weeks which have passed have started to affect the operations of the business.

“By our plans, as according to the timeline aligning with the request for funding from DBN, our business should be starting soon operating on the next level if our application were to be successful, since we had planned that the loan would be received within four or five weeks.

“But by the way it shows, if our application got to be successful, we will only know that some two to three months after the date of submission of the application.

“In the meantime as we wait, we can’t think up other plans or do things differently but to sit and wait to hear if our application is successful.

“Some of our clients may have gone away by the time we would have gotten the loan.”

He further said that in today’s world an application for a loan shouldn’t take that long.

“Three weeks should be enough to process an application. Nowadays applications for consumer loans are approved the same day the application was submitted. It’s worrisome if an application for a loan at DBN would take as long as three months.”

A query sent to DBN’s manager for marketing and branding, Ms Auguste Fabian, was not responded to as she was said to also be on maternity leave. But even after getting back to work on 14 July 2026 Ms Fabian did not respond to the query.

“Maternity leave is a good thing,” said Moses Johannes, a local entrepreneur who also intends to apply for a business loan from DBN. “But maternity leaves at DBN should not delay operations, such that operations at our enterprises who may have asked for funding may be affected too.”

The office telephone line at DBN’s Ongwediva office had been off for some weeks, but it now appears to have been restored. The Ongwediva office serves the whole northern regions of Oshikoto, Oshana, Ohangwena, Omusati and Kunene.

In the photo: Empty chairs at Ongwediva’s DBN office are said to hamper operations.