Providing decent housing for Ghana’s teeming population has been a serious challenge. While we may laud Kutu Acheampong’s efforts, in spite of his political peccadilloes, we must still admit that after his exit not much has been done in terms of policy and programmes by succeeding governments.
If anything at all, what we have been treated to, unfortunately, are feeble attempts that were not sustained, including the infamous Saglemi Housing Project.
Even when we have banks and estate development entities that claim to be rolling out safe and affordable houses for workers and middle income groups, what are really churned out are products that only affluent people – not ordinary workers – can buy or rent.
Yesterday’s edition of the Finder put the issue in horrid terms, when it quoted a research document from the National Development Planning Commission that said two out of five persons in Ghana live in ‘slums’.
That is almost 40 percent of the population. In terms of education, health and accessing jobs, we may agree that these people lack basic access, without clear programmes in place targeting them.
Slum, of course, would mean those sleeping and working as well as dressing and washing down from shops, kiosks and ‘containers’.
Dire
So dire is the situation that even in residential areas and middle class settlements, it is normal to find pockets of people and families living in such indecent structures.
Particularly in our markets and business districts, the situation is reflected in the stealthy and reckless churning out of waste at night and throughout the midnight into the wee hours of the morning, putting strains and stresses on the budgets of local government agencies.
Thank God, with recent interventions from political and traditional level crusaders, such as Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and Greater Accra Regional Minister Henry Quartey, we are seeing a diminishing of such eyesores.
Launching the 2020 Sustainable SDGs and the African Union Agenda 2063 Reports in Accra last Tuesday, Prof George Gyan-Baffour indicated that the total number of people living in such conditions has increased by about 400, 000. Rural Savannah, the report added, is among the worst cases.
That clearly imposes a huge responsibility on us to design, develop and roll out a clear, sustainable home-grown housing policy and programme that can help generate enough housing units per year to reduce the deficit.
Designs and social classes
Most Ghanaians live in rented premises because not everybody can afford to buy or own houses. Indeed, that was the thinking of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and Kutu Acheampong when they built Mamprobi and Tema townships and communities like Dansoman and South La Estates.
Alternatively, we can still have types of the Saglemi design, for those who love the typical African setting of compound or barracks housing, at costs that they can conveniently afford per month with pay-points within the project area.
Clearly, these are not the areas that attract our estate developers and banks as we have seen in the last fifty years.
Political will
That we have dithered in providing safe and affordable houses for our people over the last fifty years is proof that it will take some outside-the-box approach to deliver that safety net programme – because of the huge resources involved in construction and maintenance.
We at the Daily Statesman, however, believe that because it is an imperative, every effort should be made in beginning to deliver that all-important safety net programme under a sustainable programme as matter of national duty.
The State Housing Company is currently doing well, and those in charge should be encouraged to do more.
About The Author
