Bawumia cuts sod for Kpone housing project phase 4

The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has cut the sod for the construction of 832 additional housing units at Kpone in the Kpone Katamanso Municipality of the Greater Accra Region.

The project, which comprises one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments, is the fourth phase of the Community 26 affordable housing project.

Dr Bawumia, who also inaugurated a 1,072 housing units part of the Kpone (Community 26) affordable housing facility, said funding for the 832 units had been secured and the expansion would bring the total number of units in the project to 1,904 to offer the much-needed housing to Ghanaians.

He said the Kpone project which, started in 2006 under President Kufuor and was abandoned between 2009 and 2016, was resuscitated and reactivated by the new board and management of the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) under the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.

the past decade, he said, Ghana had achieved a remarkable 33 per cent reduction in the national housing deficit, which now stood at approximately 1.8 million housing units.

He, therefore, lauded the housing policy introduced in 2015, which he said was a significant milestone in developing the housing sector, but added that the policy lacked the effective delivery programmes needed to tackle  the supply and demand sides of the housing market.

As a result, Dr Bawumia said, many Ghanaians, particularly those from low and middle-income backgrounds, continued to face challenges in accessing safe, secure and affordable housing.

Furthermore, he said, the absence of a sustainable construction finance mechanism hindered the large-scale development of housing units and related infrastructure.

Homeownership

The Vice-President said the government established a Home Ownership Fund in 2018 to provide seed-nominated mortgages at lower interest rates towards a home-ownership drive.

To date, he said, the fund had supported the completion of 532 housing units with underrated mortgages, with 139 units under construction.

“We have also expanded the Public Sector Housing Programme through strategic partnerships with the private sector as outlined in our national housing policy.

That initiative over the past seven years, he explained, had been scheduled to deliver 609,000 units to be occupied by public sector workers and the security services.

Rent scheme

He also mentioned the Rent Assistance Scheme introduced in 2023 to provide rent advances through a service provider to allow tenants to pay monthly without the burden of upfront costs.

The Community 26 Kpone Affordable Housing

He said the scheme had so far supported 2,400 beneficiaries with a 100 per cent recovery rate.

That, he said, showed clearly that the initiative had not only been successful but also presented high prospects for sustainability.

“We have already committed to significantly increase the money under the Rent Assistance Scheme by another $200 million. We want the issue of rent advance to become a thing of the past,” he said.

The Minister of Works and Housing, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, urged the TDC and its contractors to maintain and surpass the standards they had demonstrated thus far.

That, he said, was because the diligent execution of phase four would not only enhance access to affordable housing but also serve as a cornerstone in the broader efforts to bridge the housing gap across the country.

The Managing Director of TDC Company Limited, Alice Abena Ofori Atta, said the completed phases one to three of the project had 71 blocks, including a studio, one and two-bedroom apartments.

She said the Community 26 apartments had the necessary infrastructure such as roads, drainage and utilities, while phase four had been designed to provide an additional 104 blocks of different apartments.