There are fears that the financiers of the Korle Lagoon Ecological Restoration Project (KLERP) may decide to stop sponsoring the project due to government’s inability to eject squatters from the banks of the lagoon. The country has so far lost over $10 million over the past two years, due to the continued presence of the squatters at Sodom and Gomorrah (picture) in Accra.
Sources close to the Accra Metropolitan Authority (AMA) told the ‘Evening News’ that for everyday that the squatters remained in place, the country lost a whooping $30,000. “Mr brother, this is even an improvement considering that we were formerly losing around $74,000 initially”, the source added.
The source said the reluctance of the appropriate authorities to carry out an eviction exercise, which was announced sometime ago, was mainly due to the lack of political will on the part of the government.
The source however added that residents at the settlement are also not helping matters by destroying work, which has already been done, compelling the contractors to do the work again.
The source said if the necessary measures were not put in place to arrest the situation, the financiers, which include the Kuwait government and the Arab Development Bank, would pull out and make all Ghanaians losers.
When the AMA was contacted, it referred the paper to the Ministry of Works and Housing since according to them, the AMA was just a beneficiary.
But officials of the Ministry also referred the paper back to the AMA. The source said the reluctance of the officials of both institutions to comment on developments surrounding the project was the result of the sensitive nature of the issue at stake and the need to tread carefully.
