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Politics is too serious a matter to be left to politicians – Abraham Lincoln
MONTECRISTO
Ghana’s economy is diseased in several areas – from cancers through viral diseases and inflammations to hormonal disorders that make remedying through interventions taxing.
Inflation, high costs of living, high transport fares and food prices to lack of adequate social security in living modestly after retirement and accessing adequate health service. Of course, this is not the US, UK, Canada or Australia or, for that matter, Saudi, Kuwait or Bahrain; it is poverty-riddled Ghana, with poverty-minded Ghanaian politicians in charge.
If we have challenges in accessing education and health, we sure would be having challenges accessing modest accommodation. Even for salaried middleclass workers, it is a luxury finding and affording a two-bedroomed facility, without the tenancy ending in hope.
Again, if like the currently threatened and dumped youth from the public sector, including decent VRA, SoEs, Ministry of Finance, VRA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Jubilee House, your situation may be opposition and Hell.
Government bungalows
Soldiers, policemen and women have had accommodation support since independence. It got bad, but recovered from JA Kufour and Addo Kufour through Addo Dankwa till date, if indeed the current administration would be living by its promises to continue projects that were started by the New Patriotic Party(NPP) administration.
The tradition, however, has been government bungalows that public sector chiefs’ access cheaply, without committing or being committed to maintaining – from the Labone North and South through Cantonments (Military and Prisons) to Tema and inland into the hinterlands. I don’t know whether Immigration, for instance, has bungalows, except Navrongo and Paga, though it stands to reason that you may find them, together with Customs GRA Division, using Kanda or Cantonment or Labone.
Growing up as a teenager, I knew that the VRA and ECG had their own bungalows in the Cantonments stretch – some bought and some annexed for buying at our discomfort by the political class. Plots and homes behind the Labone Coffee Shop, including one owned by amazing columnist Karl Mutt and another by military dentist and Commissioner in the Kutu Acheampong regime, Colonel Adjeitey…
I also recall Judge Siriboe and Mr Ofori, lately dead. He lived behind the GTBank and was a friend of The Chronicle. And former and late Dr Kwame Nkrumah man who became Dr KA Busia’s appointee, Dr Saki Scheck. Then Larry’s papa Peter Ala Adjetey. The pervasive fact is that particularly in Labone North and South, these have passed into the hands of developers who build for super elite folk and politicians’ girlfriends, not workers or boys like me at 67.
Kutu Acheampong
If ever government had any good intentions about housing, apart from Kwame Nkrumah who had the benefit of massive resources bequeathed Ghana by the colonial administration, it was KA Busia and Kutu Acheampong.
Madina Estates, Kwadaso, Navrongo, Dansoman etc stand in their names. Under the Fourth Republic, it has been grab-grab, without governments being human and kind enough to develop mass housing programmes for salaried workers or middleclass private sector and informal economy people.
That is why Saglemi was welcome idea, though who would benefit would still be politician and their cronies, without the opportunities being opened or spread over decades to cover more and more workers and families in saving land and ensuring community safety.
Kasoa, Ablekuma, Amasaman
That we lived and witnessed sprawling development in residential areas is proof that the politician thinks only of himself while policies about mass housing are debated and shelved with reality refusing to combine with the relevant rhetoric.
So we would be having Ablekuma, Kaos and the Adenta-Fafraha stretches into Dodowa and all the traffic, while under more innovative and inspirational regimes, traffic and residential development would be combining to produce safe neighbourhoods, instead of Kasoa’s where murder and conflict keep residents jittery 24hoursaday, instead of focusing 24hours a day to work hard and enjoy the fruit of their labour.
Sustaining assurance
Yes, Mr John Mahama has assured the nation that Saglemi will be revived. What he didn’t say was who would be benefitting and whether I MONTECRISTO would be beneficiary at 67. So, fine that contractors will soon return to continue with work on the Saglemi Affordable Housing project. According to the new Minister of Works, Housing and Water Resources, Kenneth Gilbert Adjei, that assurance is safe.
Of course, he couldn’t have disappointed us in rhetoric, when Saglemi has been a critical conversation.
“We know of the Saglemi housing project, among other projects, has stalled midway into completion. When I resumed office, I started engaging with key stakeholders, and very soon, we will move to site, and then work will begin,” he said.
Mr Adjei was speaking in an interview during a working visit to some housing projects at Shai Hills and Ningo Prampram in the Greater Accra Region last Tuesday.
He toured the National Homeownership Fund Affordable Housing Projects in Shai Hills and Tema Community 22, as well as the Ningo Prampram Coastal Sea Defence Project. As we would recall, the Saglemi Affordable Housing Project is a facility located on a 300-acre land with one to three-bedroom flats for low-income and middle-income earners.
The project commenced in 2012 in the first term of President John Dramani Mahama. It was expected to provide 5,000 residential units to alleviate accommodation deficits and challenges in the Greater Accra Region. Around $200 million had been expended on the project, with a little above 1,500 housing units partially completed.
It had stalled in 2017, following the change of government in the same year over allegations of embezzlement by former Works and Housing Minister, Samuel Ataa Akyea against the former sector Minister, Collins Dauda, who handed over to him.
The lawsuits which followed the alleged embezzlement against Mr Dauda eight years ago, led by Former Attorney-Generals (A-Gs) Gloria Akufo and Godfred Yeboah Dame, have been discontinued by the current A-G, Dr Dominic Ayine.
Plans
The Minister of Works and Housing said the government would initiate plans to ensure that projects it intended to tackle no longer stalled to cause loss and financial burdens on the state.
“We will put in plans to ensure that we don’t start projects and end midway, but to ensure that all projects get to their finishing line,” he said.
But that’s the traditional rhetoric. Assurance that is not lived out. Decades on, another Saglemi would assail our public life, and the same smooth talk would flow from the lips of the politician, while the greenery from Weija to Kasoa and Kasoa to Cape Coast fades into residential blocks and communities that exhale carbon dioxide – with galamsey adding disease upon disease because the politician wants his next benefit and assurance messages in votes.
Saglemi is beautiful on paper. It should, after all the money sunk into it. What we shouldn’t encourage is government agencies ignoring the monitoring angles to project and saddling us with debt and more debt for no reason and no public benefit that touches workers.
