Govt seeks partner for Asokore Mampong housing project
The government is seeking private partnership to complete the 1,030 units of Affordable Housing project at Asokore-Mampong in the Ashanti Region.
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According to the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Dr Kwaku Agyemang Mensah, the project, which was started in 2006, currently requires Gh¢120 million to complete.
He added that the project, which was 60 per cent complete, could not be finished with Government of Ghana resources, hence the move to seek private partnership.
Speaking to the media at the Ayigya site of the housing project as part of his Ashanti Region tour, the minister patted the shoulders of President J. A. Kufuor for the initiative but wondered how an internally generated resource could be used for the project.
He said it was for that reason that the government had opened its doors to some two private firms that had expressed interest in completing the project.
The project involves construction of 1,030 flats of one, two and three bedrooms on 50 acres of land.
Barekese
At the Barekese Dam, which supplies water to nearly 80 per cent of the residents in Kumasi, the minister expressed concern about the increasing rate of encroachment on the buffer zone of the dam.
He wondered why some few unscrupulous individuals could fell tress that provided shade for the dam.
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Dr Agyemang Mensah announced that he had completed discussions with the Ashanti Regional Security Council which had asked the military to patrol the buffer zone to ward off encroachers.
Briefing the minister, the Chief Manager in charge of Ashanti Projects for the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Mr Francis Kwesi Awotwe, said the two main encroachments included illegal chainsaw operators who were fast depleting the forest cover.
The other, he explained, was estate developers who had interfered with watercourses and had caused siltation in the dam due to erosion from their activities.
He said galamsey operations especially located around Nkwankwaa village, introduced high turbidity into the rivers that fed Barekese, which had reduced the water-carrying capabilities of the dam and caused serious structural defects that threatened the life of the dam.