GREDA committed to helping address housing. 

The Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA) has launched its 35th anniversary with a commitment to increase access to various affordable housing schemes to reduce the housing deficit in the country.

The association has assured that it would not relent in its effort to assist government to address the country’s housing deficit. 

“Since 2019, we have been able to put up about 50,000 housing units and have currently put together a plan which will be coming up very soon. We have made steps to partner legal entities to help us with the acquisition of lands.

 So, this is what we are doing, and we hope to do even more in the coming years to reduce the housing deficit,” the President of GREDA, Patrick Ebo Bonful, said.

The programmers lined up for the anniversary celebration, which is scheduled to begin this month and end in December this year, include a symposium, a donation of three-unit block classrooms, a corporate walk and run, and an award and dinner dance.

The anniversary festivities will be climaxed with awards ceremony which is scheduled to occur on December 25. 

Collaboration 

Mr. Bonful, therefore, called for a collaboration between stakeholders and the government to deal with situations and issues of land litigation in the country.

That, he said, would help them to secure lands that were free from mitigation in order to deliver on their agenda of affordable housing in the country. 

He said although the high cost of building materials was adversely affecting business, he expressed the hope that a stable situation would be created in order to reduce the cost of building materials for consumers. 

Commitment

The Director of Oak Firm, Doris Adabasu Kuwornu, said the firm was committed to keeping the awards processes simple, transparent and fair to all key stakeholders.

She said they would ensure that the stakes for the nomination were relevant and of high standards in order to assess nominated individuals and corporate performers in the industry. 

“As GREDA takes pride in the successes achieved as a result of these 35 years, it becomes very imperative that recognition and prominence is given to the sector,” she said.

Process

Mrs. Kuwornu said letters would be sent to individuals and organizations to nominate candidates for the various awards categories.

Thus, she said, nominated candidates would be required to complete a detailed questionnaire to justify why they should be the selected. 

“The completed questionnaires and supporting evidence would be reviewed with the support of focus groups of evaluators drawn from the housing and construction sectors and the collated results would be submitted to the GREDA Council for endorsement and declaration,” she said.

Awards and Criteria 

Mrs. Kuwornu said the awards scheme had 29 awards categories with three major competitive areas and two special awards. 

She indicated that the criteria for selecting the winners of the awards would include success factor in the real estate sector, construction innovation, technological innovation, social impact, corporate social responsibility, market share, after sales customer service orientation, ecological and ethical issues and competition benchmarking within set category. 

She, therefore, called on stakeholders to co-operate with the firm to ensure a prominent awards scheme in order to make it a revered and sought after awards scheme as a result of its strict adherence to probity, accountability, fairness and transparency.