Gossip
Playback of an old song
Last week, there was an event which ordinarily would have passed without notice for being just one of its numerous kind we have seen or heard of in the past. It was the launch of what was described as the first national housing policy in the country. And that was what caught my fancy.
Was it the first national housing policy we have had in this country? Is there anything special about it to make it seem so? Definitely not. In the First Republic, there was a national housing policy which translated into the construction of housing estates all over the country. All the regional and district capitals and some major towns benefitted from this policy.
The General Acheampong regime pursued a housing policy with emphasis on small communities. That was the birth of the Low Cost Housing Scheme which was designed to meet the needs and pockets of low-salaried workers all over the country.
The policy assumed a bigger dimension when it was expanded to cater for the middle-income group but with those in the public service as the target groups. The sprawling Dansoman Estates in Accra and the Mawuli Estates in Ho and many others are the physical testimonies of that era.
The Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC), under Jerry John Rawlings, pursued a housing policy just as the previous regimes through the State Housing Corporation, which later became a company without any corresponding improvement in its mandate and delivery.
The entry of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) into estate development in the country brought significant improvement in the sector.The SSNIT Housing Scheme also started with what was described as affordable with ordinary workers in mind. That was how the Sakumono Estates, near Tema, got started.
Just like the low-cost housing project initiated during the Acheampong era, the affordable housing scheme introduced by SSNIT expanded to cover different income groups. While bureaucracy, government interference and mismanagement collectively conspired to cripple the State Housing Company (SHC), slow and low recovery rates and some amount of poor management practices negatively affected the operations of the SSNIT Housing Scheme. However, it remains the largest public intervention in the housing sector to date.
The Kufuor administration also came out with its own housing schemes in various parts of the country.
Unfortunately, these projects never reached completion stage before the New Patriotic Party (NPP) exited office. At least, their completion would have closed the housing deficit which miraculously had stood at 1.7 million per annum for many years even though our population kept rising.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC), under Professor John Evans Atta Mills,came with its grand housing project. The infamous STX Housing Project was targeting 5,000 housing units for the security services and many more for other public sector workers. Sadly, this project never advanced beyond the ceremonial sod-cutting stage.
All said and done, there had always been a national housing policy or attempts at preparing one. What had always been the problem was inconsistency and fruitless efforts of every government to claim credit where there was none instead of continuing with and consolidating what others have started or were doing.
The challenges enumerated under the new policy, including high cost of land and accessibility,lack of credit facilities, high cost of building materials, outdated building codes and standards and non-existent effective regulatory and mononitoring mechanisms have always been with us and are going to remain for many years to come, thanks to a bureaucracy that is impervious to change.
The Ghana Real Estates Developers Association (GREDA) has been playing its part but with its members more inclined towards profit making, the government should not expect that the needs of the majority of the working class would be addressed by this body.
As stated earlier, there is nothing in this policy that we have not heard before. If there is going to be anything new which we are yet to see, it may be a commitment to pursue a housing policy with religious fervour in a consistent manner to radically bring a noticeable transformation in the sector and reduce the burden of workers, especially those in the lower and middle-income brackets who are victims of private landlords.
Source: graphic.com.gh
