No national housing policy yet

The absence of a policy has been identified as the main cause of the challenges being experienced in the housing sector.

The lack of co-ordination and its attendant haphazard construction of houses have also been identified as some of the challenges confronting the sector.

Current statistics put the national housing deficit at 1.7 million.

Architect Stella Athiabah, acting Registrar of the Architects Registration Council, told the Daily Graphic yesterday that the situation had arisen since the 1980s because anytime the process of developing a housing policy was started, it was stopped along the way, only for it to be started all over again.

In the years gone past, each government had tried to work with its own guidelines and different legislation in the statute books, which had resulted in uncoordinated activities in the sector and a myriad of problems associated with the provision of housing.

She was speaking in an interview after addressing this year’s ‘Conference for Housing Excellence’ held in Accra. It was organised by the Ghana Institute of Housing and other major stakeholders.

It was on the theme, “Building the right infrastructure and inter-agency partnerships to create a robust and sustainable housing environment.”

Lack of Policy

On how the lack of a policy had affected the country, Architect Athiabah said “because the housing policy is meant to advocate partnership around government, private sector and international partners to move the social housing, its absence delayed pragmatic efforts to solve the housing deficit.”

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“Each of us has our role. It is government’s role to develop policy but it is the role of the housing professionals (architects, engineers, surveyors etc.) to be aware of what is in the document and see how we can practicalise it,” she said.

“Ghana does not have a housing policy that has been signed and approved. What we have been doing all along, as someone mentioned earlier, is that the housing policy is in people’s minds,” Stella Athiabah added.

Earlier in a speech on the need for strategic partnerships and identifying the role and responsibilities in reshaping the housing sector, Mrs Athiabah called for a partnership among all stakeholders which would involve private, public and voluntary efforts.

Mr Ashigbey

Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, Managing Director, Graphic Communications Group Limited, asked stakeholders in the housing sector to court the media to ensure they understood and communicated the right information, as well as the problems of the housing sector to the public.

“We have a very critical power to be able to address it because that is something that touches everybody, and you will need everybody involved in finding a solution to the problem,” he said.

Professor Sam O. Afram, Head of Department, College of Architecture and Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, disclosed that Ghana and four other African countries – Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa- had been selected for a pilot of ‘Housing Centres of Excellence,’ and that US$90,000 had already been provided for Ghana’s project to take off.

By Edmund Smith-Asante/Daily Graphic/Ghana

Writer’s email: Edmund.Asante@graphic.com.gh