We need policy to ensure state property maintenance

It is common knowledge that one of the grave challenges of the country is the lack of the maintenance of property, especially those belonging to the state.

Oftentimes, we have inaugurated and commissioned facilities and projects with pomp, only for the infrastructure to be left to deteriorate a few years or even months down the line.

Some of these facilities have been constructed with the taxpayer’s money, grants and even loans. Yet we look on as they are abused and misused, till they are left in a sorry state.

Examples abound, such as the famed Dubai at the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange in Accra with its colourful fountain, which was praised by many a Ghanaian as adding to the aesthetics of Accra, but which is now in a horrid state.

The facility has now become a place where tricycles either damaged or loaded with refuse are abandoned while the sanitation tools and equipment used by workers of the Korle Klottey Municipal Assembly are kept near the statue of the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah.

The beautiful fountain is no more functioning and the water that has dried up has left sludge particles in and around the water pipes.

Electrical wires or cables and other materials and tools, which used to be beneath the water when the fountain was functioning, are also now exposed to the weather.

As if it is now the accepted practice, street lights that are fixed on newly constructed roads at great cost cease to function soon after inauguration, putting the lives of motorists and pedestrians at risk.

The Daily Graphic is irked that after 68 years of independence, we have, as a people, still not learnt how to ensure that infrastructure built for our use is maintained for generations.

Now a whole facility such as the Eastern Regional Residency that houses the minister and hosts high-ranking officials who attend official engagements has been left to decay and the situation has compelled the Regional Minister, Rita Akosua Adjei Awatey, to seek accommodation elsewhere at her own cost (Saturday, February 22, 2025, Daily Graphic).

We are saddened that the facilities are in so much disrepair that they currently do not befit the status to accommodate dignitaries.

The Daily Graphic believes that officials responsible for the maintenance of this state property must explain why no renovation work has been done on such property since the colonial era.

We also suggest that going forward a policy must be instituted to ensure that funds are made available by metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) for all state facilities to be maintained at regular intervals.

Any MMDCE who fails to regularly maintain a state facility he or she is living in or overseeing must be surcharged at the end of his or her tenure, so they are put in good condition before a new MMDCE takes over.

Maintaining state property must be made part of the chief executive’s key performance index (KPI) or deliverables while in office, failure of which must attract some sanctions. All MMDAs have works, engineering, roads and estate departments that must be made to fulfil their mandate.

There must also be deliberate fundraising models to ensure that there are always funds to renovate official bungalows and other facilities, such as the use of housing or rent allowances for officials to repair facilities that accommodate them because there will be wear and tear as they are used and that will require repainting.

By so doing, we believe that we would be curtailing the challenge as experienced at the Eastern Regional Residency, where the contractor renovating the regional minister’s bungalow had to abandon the project in April last year because of a lack of funds.

Further, the Public Works Department (PWD) and the Department of Parks and Gardens must be adequately resourced with the equipment they need to do the work for which they were established, and we urge the government to ensure that this is done immediately.

The required number of staff must also be employed by the departments to enable them to keep government bungalows and the surroundings of other infrastructure well-manicured.

On no account must we leave state facilities to be buried in weeds as if there is no life in those areas, or neglected and turned into a habitation for reptiles and wild animals.