On Housing Situation In Ghana: MAHAMA, False Messiah Who Promises Much And Delivers Nothing

It is abhorrent that NDC have presented a Manifesto in which over 70% of its content talks about their ‘achievement’ which unashamedly avoiding their previous commitments. Given that the true objective of a political manifesto is to outline goals and intentions to which a party is to be held accountable this highlights the NDC ignorance at best and chicanery and dishonesty at worst. As a physical Planning and Development Analyst I feel obliged to identify and pinpoint some flaws in the NDC’s Manifesto on infrastructure with specific reference on housing issues.

In 2008, the NDC under Atta Mills delivered a ‘Manifesto for a Better Ghana’, which they indicated that ‘this pledge is our covenant with the people of Ghana’. In 2012 the NDC under John Mahama delivered the Ghanaian people a ‘Manifesto Advancing the Better Ghana Agenda’ and now in 2016 a new Manifesto ‘Changing Lives Transforming Ghana’. Since 2008 the Ghanaian people have been waiting. Waiting and suffering. Those in Ghana and those with family in the world diaspora have been experiencing the suffering of a decline in the fortunes of Ghana.

Where the ‘Better Ghana’ is promised us? What good are manifestos that promise improvement if you cannot stick by it and deliver it? Things have deteriorated to such a point that the platform of a better Ghana has been abandoned, now under Mahama, if Ghana continues to follow the NDC we have to transform it!

The most fundamental obligation of government involves respecting the essential needs of the people. The Ghanaian Constitution enshrines this principle “(2) Every person in Ghana, whatever his race, place of origin, political opinion, color, religion, creed or gender shall be entitled to the fundamental human rights and freedoms of the individual contained in this Chapter but subject to respect for the rights and freedoms of others and for the public interest.”

A traditional list of immediate basic needs is food/water, shelter and clothing. This is preserved in Article 25 of the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care”.

Housing, Urban Development, Rural Development and Slum Upgrading and Prevention were all big ticket items in the 2012 NDC Manifesto. In 2016 the emphasis has intensely shrunk. What an abject failure the NDC has been in the area of housing provision. The so called ‘Manifesto for a Better Ghana’ first agenda for housing development was to ‘create Land Banks to ensure available, affordable serviced plots, with proper compensation for stool and family lands’. Eight years later not even one square meter of land has been expropriated and banked.

The second agenda that the NDC would ‘enforce land use planning and property rights’, emphasizing District level accountability was just another vain promise. Today the planning system is in gridlock, people are forced to illegally build their homes (whether they be mansions or slums) and that has led to building collapse and flooding.

The NDC also promised to ‘set and enforce building and building materials standards’. Ghana is experiencing worsening predatory development under the NDC government where slums and ghettos have increased by 20%. Today the crisis of shoddy workmanship and flawed construction is escalating at a frightening rate. Not only is the crisis intensifying but lives have been lost through the ineptitude of government policy executed by incompetent, immoral and corrupt cutthroats within the NDC government.

The NDC under Mahama’s flawed leadership has rapidly ignored in an expedient display of memory loss that hundreds of lives were lost within Mahama’s four years term in office due to his flawed planning policies and regulatory system. Given the high level of demonstrated risk associated with the potential further risks to lives and property, a flood mitigation policy should have had a prime place in Mahama’s ‘Changing Lives Transforming Ghana’ Manifesto. Those who have previously been impacted and those who carry future risk would do well to ask what is being done to save lives in a transforming Ghana. Without key safeguards, the way lives will be changed and Ghana transformed is not positive or proactive at all.

Housing provision linked to careful planning for healthy communities with adequate sanitation, water, power, good roads network, access to jobs and education is critical to a sustainable and prosperous Ghana. The 2008 NDC’s housing policy entitled ‘the right to shelter’ was clearly just another gimmicky catchphrase. The NDC wants to ‘establish a district-wide affordable housing scheme in which 2-3 bedroom semi-detached houses will be built mostly with local material’. Unless housing provision is linked to access to employment, building affordable housing in each district is counter-intuitive.

The NDC have been public in their criticism of NPP’s ‘one district one factory’ agenda yet this would appear to sit better with a decentralized affordable housing policy unless the intent is to create housing to shelter unemployed or underemployed citizens with no hope of advancement. The cost of 2-3 bedroom semi-detached houses in each district to offset housing deficit at district level will be much higher than building a factory that will create jobs and reduce the staggering 50 percent of the youth in the country who have no jobs. Employment is the key to district housing as employment leads to housing construction and as demand in turn creates further local jobs.

In 2012 the NDC Manifesto identified that there was then an estimated national backlog of 1.5 million housing units increasing at a rate of 100,000 per year. Then it was “an imperative” for accelerated construction of housing units in all settlements. Ghana’s current housing supply is predominantly delivered by the private sector and individuals which cumulatively produced below 45,000 units per annum. In 2016 the NDC highlights as its achievement in this area some interventions “at various stages of completion” totaling only 14,888 housing units.

If you are living in crowded conditions or are without permanent shelter, these startling figures will fill you with more dread. Adults today who were children in 2008 are still without adequate shelter but we are being told the answer is in providing tablets to schoolchildren. How can our youth achieve their full potential through education if they are missing basic accommodation?

How can you find permanent work, let alone meaningful work, if you have no fixed address? To extrapolate 15,000 new housing units in eight years to fix a shortage of almost 2 million dwellings is more than transformational, it would be miraculous. But as we know Mahama is no savior, he is a false messiah who promises much and delivers nothing.

To quote Kofi Anan “To live is to choose. But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.” Choose well my fellow Ghanaians, as it is clear that we cannot afford another Mahama term if we are to prosper and grow.

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