Audit report on gov’t landed property out

The Minister of Works and Housing, Francis Asenso-Boakye, has received the inception report of all government landed property in the form of offices and residential accommodation across the country.

This follows the completion on work by a committee the minister tasked to undertake a comprehensive audit on government landed properties, and make recommendations for the setting up of what would be known as the Government Property Database.

According to the chairman of the committee and Member of Parliament for Abetifi, Bryan Acheampong, the Government Property Database, when fully operationalized, will have useful features such as the type of the property, the condition, the estimated value as well the GPS coordinates of all public offices and residential properties.

Report

Presenting the report, Bryan Acheampong revealed that an estimated 25,000 government landed property across the country would be captured on the system to enable the host ministry plan and manage the landed assets efficiently.

“The committee has so far audited and captured about 1,380 landed properties of Ministries, Departments, Metropolitan and District Assemblies (MMDAs) onto the database. We would need additional six months to fully capture the rest of the estimated 25,000 government properties across the country unto the system,” he said.

Receiving the report, Mr Asenso Boakye expressed his gratitude to the committee for the extensive work undertaken since its inauguration late last year.

The Minister said he was particularly impressed with the sense of patriotism exhibited by the committee in executing its mandate, saying the committee undertook the assignment without demanding any financial or logistical support from the ministry.

Mr Boakye noted that the Database will eventually be a useful source of information to the Public Works Department (PWD), an agency of his ministry whose operations will soon be diversified to enable it effectively manage and maintain all public landed properties in the country.

He gave the assurance that the report would be studied to consider the recommendations and the way forward in ensuring that the project is completed.

It would be recalled that the Minister announced government’s plans to undertake audit of all its landed assets across the country with the inauguration of an 8-member committee.

This, according to the Minister, was necessitated by the responsibility of the ministry to keep track of all government buildings, offices, and residential accommodation across the country, validate locations, capture current state, check integrity and where necessary, recover government landed assets.