Hope for tenants

The Law Reform Commission yesterday initiated moves aimed at reviewing the Rent Act, 1963, Act 220, to address the problems tenants go through and are forced to put up with due to the acute housing deficit in the country, especially in the urban areas.

The Commission would therefore during its review work, seek the views of the public, resource persons and players in the Real Estate industry, especially institutions representing the Estate Agencies.

To this end, a symposium will be held on April 18, at the British Council. All those who can submit a memorandum on the topic are also welcome.

The law courts are presently flooded with numerous Landlord and tenant cases. The Rent Control office has become congested with complaints and respondents who are all aggrieved about one problem or another relating to accommodation. The relationship between a Landlord and a tenant most often put the former in a stronger bargaining position. This is so because the demand for accommodation in the Country now exceeds supply.

The review has therefore become necessary in view of the fact that the Rent Act, which is presently the law regulating affairs between Landlords, tenants and related parties has been overtaken by demands of present day development. Experts say the Act came into effect at a period when the economy was not as liberalised as it is today, with individual participants deeply involved in the estates and rental housing industry.

According to the Chairman of the LRC, Justice A K Paaku Kludze, a retired Supreme Court Judge, the Rent Act 220 is an obsolete piece of legislation which is more than four decades old. "It is therefore necessary to critically review its provisions to make recommendations which will bring the law into conformity with our present social and economic circumstances," he added.

He noted that the Rent Act, from the time of its enactment has been found to be difficult to implement, describing it as "a patchwork of sections from the old English law," adding that "it is an imperfect imitation of the English Rent Acts." He said in copying from the English legislation, many omissions were deliberately and inadvertently made, and it is therefore difficult to enforce because the Ghanaian tenant is "not a prototype of the English tenant, whom the English legislation was passed for."

Justice Paaku Kludze said the irony of the situation is that the English have repealed many of their old laws on which the Ghanaian law is model.

He said the implementation of the Rent Act, as it now exists, has in many cases generated needless friction between tenants and landlords. He noted that often neither party is satisfied with the processes or the ultimate result of the recourse to the Rent Act for relief.

"We must envisage a legislation which will not only apply dry and abstract rules. We must also consider the acute housing situation in this country and consider the extent to which legislation can contribute to the solution of the problem by encouraging investment in the housing industry," he stated.

Justice Paaku Kludze observed that the review is therefore aimed mainly at updating the law to be abreast with and reflect current situation such that, rents for properties are not artificially over suppressed to discourage others from investing in the industry and also enable landlords' rehabilitate and maintain their existing properties.

Among the various works, it would be proposed that provisions are made to ensure that proper sanitary facilities are provided by such rental facilities to ensure that the health of the occupants are protected, and the need to re-align the whole Rent Control Structure with the District Assemblies such that their presence would be felt.

He said the review would also assess the need to substitute the position of a Rent Commissioner with a Rent Control Board.