…in pursuit of accommodation for Policemen

By Awura Ama Obeng

The NDC says it is backing the STX Housing project after coming to the conclusion that “...it is an excellent panacea to mitigating the over one million housing deficit facing the nation”.

In a statement released yesterday and signed by its National Propaganda Secretary, Richard Quarshigah, the party was particularly delighted that the government had, as a matter of priority, decided that the Police Service shall be the first beneficiaries of 30,000 housing units out of the intended 200,000 houses the project will provide.

“It is no secret that our security personnel especially the military and the police are frustrated by lack of adequate, reasonable and decent duty post which has a negative effect on the output of the essential services they perform for society” the statement said.

It explained that as a result of the fact the country is at the verge of becoming an oil producing economy, there is the need to make more recruitments into the police and Fire Services in particular to safeguard the peace and security of the nation and this automatically behooves on government to provide the new recruits with accommodation.

“Doing a proper projection, new recruits into the security services would have to be housed but that will be impossible since the nation is unable to adequately meet the housing needs of the present security personnel we have. “The desire of Ghanaians to see the oil flow this year is high so it becomes logically clear that increasing the number of personnel of the security services cannot wait and so is provision of accommodation for them. “It is also pertinent to note that a de-motivated police service affects the justice system and fuels corruption in the service and one major way of eliminating such tendencies is to ensure effective accommodation facilities for the police personnel” the statement emphasized.

The NDC took a swipe at the NPP which has vehemently opposed the STX Housing project accusing it of behaving like their forebearers, the UP/PP who did their worse to prevent Ghana’s first President, the late Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, from putting up the Akosombo Dam and constructing the Accra-Tema Motorway. The statement said since the NDC was a social democratic party, it is mindful of the need to providing affordable housing for the majority of Ghanaians; a position which is in contrast with that of the previous NPP- led government which focused on building deluxe houses the least of which was estimated to cost one hundred thousand dollars, targeted at only the rich and affluent in society.

It said that the resources spent on such expensive mansions could have been spent in building several affordable housing units such as the Adenta and Sakomono Flats to benefit majority of Ghanaians. It is in the light of these reasoning that the party considers the STX Project laudable.