General News of Wednesday, 24 January 2018
Source: citifmonline.com
2018-01-24
Minister for Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea
Minister of Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea, has told Citi News that the New Patriotic Party [NPP] government is committed to completing housing projects started under previous administrations.
He said the government is looking for funds to complete the affordable housing projects started under former Presidents John Agyekum Kufuor and John Dramani Mahama.
“We are also going round to find monies out of budgetary source to finance these projects so that our people can go and live in, that is a must,” he said.
He said the government has assessed the projects to determine how much it will cost to complete the buildings, adding that such projects will not be allowed to go waste.
“We have done what is called quantity surveying, we have come out with bills of quantities as to how much it will cost to complete them”
The Affordable Housing Programme was launched back in September 2005 by former President Kufuor and was aimed at providing housing to low and middle-income workers of the country. It is supposed to provide accommodation for at least 12,000 families.
But work on the project has not been consistent, with successive governments failing on the various timelines.
The Project Engineer for the Affordable Housing project in Koforidua, Bio Sackey, has said that an estimated GhC117 million will be needed to complete the whole project.
Housing project under Mahama
The NDC under the leadership of John Mahama initiated a 1,500 housing unit project at Ningo to provide affordable housing for Ghanaians in a bid to reduce the country’s housing deficit of about 1.7 million.
The Ningo project was among the few John Mahama initiated to address the problem.
Former President Kufuor initiated the Kpone affordable housing project as well as others in Borteman also in the Greater Accra Region and Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, at a cost of over $300 million funded by the Government of Ghana.
The project consultant then, Ernest Biney, promised that the project will be completed in 2007.
But the current state of the structures will demand extensive works to make them usable.