Police And New Accommodation

The first phase involves a $1.5 billion housing deal for the construction of about 30,000 housing units for the country’s security agencies, which has sparked a heated debate between the minority and the majority in Parliament.

The minority insists that although it supports the deal in principle, it is expensive and would not benefit ordinary Ghanaians.

The majority side, however, thinks otherwise, and is hopeful that Parliament will okay the deal for the government to roll out the agreement.

The back and forth arguments forced President Mills to call for a suspension of the debate on the issue, for the government to do further amendments to the whole agreement.

The new agreement was submitted to Parliament on Wednesday, and referred to both the Finance and Works and Housing committees, by the Speaker of Parliament for their study, and subsequent report to the floor of the house, for the debate to resume.

It is the hope of The Chronicle that since both the minority and majority share a common agreement – that our security agencies indeed need decent accommodation – they should then try and work out a compromise, in order to approve of the deal, since it would serve the best interest of the country.

Our major headache, however, is the sort of maintenance culture that we will develop for these huge edifices that are going to be put up across the country.

It is an undeniable fact that apart from the military, the rest of the security agencies, especially the police, lack good maintenance culture.

Most of the private houses rented by the police administration for its personnel have been turned into slums, due to the lack of conscious maintenance.

It is in the light of this that The Chronicle is urging the government to put a special clause on maintenance of the buildings in the agreement that she will sign with the security agencies, to ensure the proper upkeep of the facilities. If possible, the Public Works Department (PWD) should be mandated to do regular quarterly inspections, to ensure that the buildings are properly kept, and where necessary do maintenance.

The state cannot afford to spend huge sums of money to provide high class accommodation, only to allow it to deteriorate within a short time, and spend huge sums of monies years later to rehabilitate these buildings.