‘We’ll pay your rent in our 2nd term’ – NPP to youth

The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has promised to pay the rent advance of Ghanaian youth in its second term.

The move, according to a member of the NPP communication team, Nana Akomea would in the short term cushion the Ghanaian youth from the problem of high rent and long rent advance.

“Government will in effect pay the rent Advance for you, and you pay the rent monthly to the scheme.

“In effect then, the NPP government in its next term will eliminate the big problem of rent advance facing the youth and indeed many other Ghanaians,” Nana Akomea announced on Monday, during a press conference in Accra.

He said the next NPP government would implement the move through the National Rental Assistance Scheme – a new, novel, and a revolutionary scheme that would among other things provide low-interest loans to eligible Ghanaian youth solely to enable them to pay for rental accommodation.

The rent advances, Akomea explained would be paid directly into the bank accounts of beneficiary landlords and it would target Ghanaian youth in both formal and informal sectors, with identifiable or regular income.

The beneficiary youth would repay the loans on a monthly basis.

Beyond the payment of rent advances, Akomea stated that the government would set up seed capital of ¢100 million, which would also serve the purpose of leverage to attract additional investment from the private sector.

“Government will implement the necessary regulatory and operational bodies to anchor the policy,” he stated.

He added, “Indeed as we speak, a new Rent Control Act has been drafted for review by Cabinet in this direction. So basically, when this National Rental Assistance comes into being in the next NPP government, the big problem of two to three years Advance rent would greatly reduce, if not ended.”