Housing project to create more jobs

Page 72: Daily Graphic, March 18, 2010.
Story: Albert K. Salia
MORE than 75,000 jobs are to be provided under the government’s five-year national housing project, the Minister of Water Resources, Works and Housing, Mr Alban Bagbin, has disclosed.
“The construction of the various housing units will engage the services of contractors, artisans, consultants, building materials sellers and suppliers, food vendors, among others,” he added.
Speaking in an interview, Mr Bagbin said the project, which is to be implemented by STX Corporation of Korea, has a minimum of 30 per cent local participation which would ensure that Ghanaians actively participated in the project.
He said construction works on the 200,000 housing units was expected to begin in July, this year and indicated that the agreement between the Ghana government and STX Corporation was expected to be laid before Parliament next week for parliamentary approval to facilitate the take-off of the project.
He said under the first phase of the project, 30,000 housing units would be built for the security agencies as part of the government’s commitment to improve the acute accommodation situation facing the security agencies.
Mr Bagbin said the basic data collection and housing design under the 200,000 national housing project had already been completed.
He said STX Group of Korea, which would undertake the project, would build various industrial plants including a cement plant, rolling mill and autoclaved lightweight concrete plant, while IT would also seek the assistance of the Korean government to set up a training programme with Korea’s Knowledge Sharing Project to help develop Ghanaian human resources.
Mr Bagbin said the Ghana Police Service would benefit from 20,000 of the housing units for its personnel throughout the country in the next five years.
Mr Bagbin said the remaining 10,000 of the housing units allocated to the security agencies would go to the military and other security agencies.
He recalled that the Police Administration suspended enlistment into the service in June last year so as not to aggravate the already exacerbated accommodation problem, noting that the problems hindered recruitment and transfers in the security services “because it is not matched with provision of accommodation”.
Mr Bagbin said the construction of the housing units for the security services would not only help to separate the personnel from the civilian population but would enforce discipline, training and esprit de corps, stressing that “this will also help to mobilise personnel in case of emergency situations, which need urgent response”.