NPP has no track record in affordable housing to advice us – E. T. Mensah

Water Resources, Works and Housing minister, E. T. Mensah has taken a swipe at the opposition New Patriotic Party(NPP), for what he terms releasing an unfortunate and misleading statement on the on-going tango between government and local building contractors body, GREDA.

A statement released by the NPP yesterday, accused government for side-lining the Ghana Real Estates Developers Association(GREDA) over the new government proposal of a 500 housing unit by a South African firm,GUMA, saying the action is a slap in the face of Ghanaians.

The statement read ‘’One sore point regarding STX, a South Korean company, was the side lining of Ghanaian estate developers who offered a detailed alternative, built by Ghanaians at half the price STX was quoting’’.

‘’With the failure of the STX, all have hoped Ghanaian estate developers will be at the centre of governmental partnership and support in the delivery of affordable housing. It is therefore with great sadness that we learn government has embarked on yet another partnership with and support for a foreign company, GUMA of South Africa, to deliver 500 affordable housing units’’.

‘’Ghanaian estate developers are once again side lined. Their proposal on partnership and support with government has not been responded to since 2010’’.

But speaking on the Gold Power Drive on Wednesday, Mr. E. T. Mensah says the NPP lack the moral right to school the NDC government on the provision of affordable housing in the country since they(NPP) could not deliver even a one-bed room apartment for the country in their eight years of administration.

‘’The statement is very unfortunate and misleading in the first place, and saying that we have side-lined Ghanaian contractors is not true’’.

‘’When it comes to housing delivery in this country, political traditions which has no record at all is the Busia –Danquah tradition. Kwame Nkruamh delivered the largest number of housing in this country. The second tradition which provided the largest number of houses is the NDC tradition. We can talk about Dansoman SSNIT flat, Adenta SSNIT flat, Tema com. 3 flats, and even the skyline of this country’’.

‘’We were the ones who thought there was the need to do something about the country’s skyline, so SSNIT were ask to build the Trust towers, and then the buildings around the cedi house and the cedi house itself and then we created the Airport city and in a lot of these projects we used local contractors not foreign contractors’’, he said.

‘’So they have no moral right to question what we are doing in our approach as to delivering housing for this country’’.

‘’We are in our three years of administration and we have initiated something, it took them six years to decide that they have to do something and the approach they even took was very unprofessional ‘’.