We must champion local materials usage for housing projects

The basic needs of humans are food, clothing and shelter, and these take up a chunk of our earnings because they are indispensable.

However, while one can adjust what one eats and what clothes to wear when prices soar, the same cannot be said of housing or shelter.

We often hear of affordable housing projects for the working class but in the end, they become high-end properties beyond the reach of the average worker.

A cursory look around our cities shows many beautiful estates, edifices and even flats for accommodation that are still unoccupied and only citizens in the diaspora can afford them.

The story is not different when individuals decide to put up their own shelters or houses. They struggle throughout their working life and some are not even able to occupy their houses before they die.

The more fortunate ones can only occupy their houses after retirement while the majority move into their uncompleted houses and continue to build till they are done or called home.

This stress that workers have to endure is especially due to the rising cost of cement, iron rods, roofing sheets and other building materials, most of which are imported or sold at exorbitant prices.

Apart from the difficulty in acquiring a plot of land to build on, the cost of building materials has so much skyrocketed that starting a building project most times appears to be an impossible venture.

It is the sheer faith exercised by many Ghanaians that makes them attempt to build, and it is even a wonder that some succeed despite the constant fluctuation in prices of materials needed to put up a house; not to talk of the high cost of labour brought about by the high cost of living also influenced by global financial trends.

In spite of the sometimes outrageous cost of imported building materials, many builders have been hoodwinked into believing that local materials such as wood, bricks and even locally manufactured cement are inferior and cannot be used for one’s house.

Suffice it to say that even in the developed world most of the houses are built with wood, bricks or shipping containers.

Given the challenges we face trying to put a roof over our heads, the Daily Graphic sees the call by the Managing Director of Nilex Properties, Nilesh More, on players in the real estate industry to patronise locally made building materials instead of importing them, as very timely and in the right direction.

Indeed, as he explained during a media engagement as part of activities towards the first-ever real estate exhibition, that would reduce the cost of estate property, which is currently too high for the ordinary Ghanaian.

We also agree that doing so would not only boost the local industry but would generate thousands of jobs for the youth, thereby addressing the issue of unemployment in the country.

As we await the two-day maiden real estate expo scheduled for December 12 and 13, this year, we urge anyone with a plan to build to consider the use of local materials to reduce costs and help grow the business of those in the local materials industry.

We also call on developers, real estate agents, insurance experts, financial institutions, investment experts and all other stakeholders in the housing sector to get involved in developing the local materials industry.

By so doing we will be establishing the local materials industry, instead of improving the economies of those countries whose products we patronise and, thus, create employment opportunities for their citizens.

We pray that the pledge by Nilex Properties and other estate developers to move into affordable housing schemes that will be within the reach of all Ghanaians by using local materials such as blocks, tiles, wood, doors and cement, to provide apartments, semi-detached and townhouses at a lower cost, will not be a fluke but a reality.

Let us all encourage the use of local materials to make housing truly affordable to the average Ghanaian worker.