UN team to help upgrade slums in Ghana

Accra, June 12, GNA- A team from the Kenyan-based United Nations Habitat Design on Slum Upgrading Facility, is expected in Ghana to facilitate national efforts to mobilise capital for slum upgrading projects. The follow-up visit will include a meeting with officials of the Ministry of Works and Housing on Tuesday, June 14, to discuss the pilot project identification phase and develop a greater coherence of donor intervention and public and private investments.

Mr Issah Ketekewu, Deputy Minister of Works and Housing made this known to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview at the weekend. He said the project, which targets slums like Sodom and Gomorrah in the Accra Metropolis, would attract a combination of sources of investment capital, UN packaging law, shelter services and small business elements of slum upgrading.

Mr Ketekewu said it would utilise financial instruments for each phase of the project and re-package these elements into a comprehensive package and build effective partnership at the local level between development and financial partners. Alhaji Alhassan Dawuni, Chief Technical Advisor, Housing also told the GNA that the team was in the country last December to do some design work for the world body. He said the project was one of the global strategies to address the housing needs of the poor and improve on basic services in the project beneficiary areas, to meet the benchmark of the 2015 objectives of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

Alhaji Dawuni said under the MDG, 100 million slum dwellers worldwide are listed to be provided with basic services like potable water and toilet facilities.