We Must Secure Our Important Buildings Through Maintenance Culture

Right from our days as a colony of the British monarchy we, [Gold Coast now Ghana}, inherited and have had a lot of buildings erected to serve as schools, barracks sports stadia, post offices, ministerial buildings, tourists sites, traditional buildings and many more. Some of the buildings are new, but a lot more of them, though very useful are quite old with some of them, over hundred years old. But one thing that runs through the management of these buildings is little or lack of maintenance culture. Apart from a few of them many government establishments have not seen renovation for years with poor toilets and electrical fittings.

The neglected parts of these buildings are not only the walls that have not been repainted for years, the sanitation in them are terrible.

A visit to our police living quarters and barracks would reveal failure of the law enforcement agents for often being guilty of neglecting their dirty surroundings. This requires serious enquiry by the leadership of the Ghana Police Service. Our football stadia provide facilities for entertainment.

But a visit to the refurbished Accra Sports Stadium and the Baba Yara Stadium in Kumasi would reveal shortcomings regarding the scoreboard the toilet facilities that are terrible. Apart from the Cape Coast Stadium which is said to be relatively ok, the Esipon Stadium in Secondi and the Tamale Stadium also seem to be facing a lot of problems.

it has come to light that the Accra stadium and some of the stadia have had their electricity disconnected for nonpayment of their bills. Some of our ministerial buildings across the nation cannot escape blame for the poor maintenance of their walls and toilet facilities and electrical wirings which are poor as compared to other buildings owned by private firms.

The poor maintenance culture in government buildings is not acceptable because it can affect our credibly in and outside the nation. It can also lead to the poorly managed buildings collapsing on spectators or catching fire. This is not what we expect to happen, therefore there is the need to do something about the situation. If lack of maintenance culture in government establishments is not good, our tourist sites are considered to be worse. Since the sites receive visitors daily there is the need to keep them tidy at all times and to take care of their structural and electrical architectures.

We can reverse the situation through the following measures;

• Since managing government outfits is becoming difficult there is the need to establish a public safety committee within the ministry of works and housing with responsibility to monitor all government buildings and tourist centers.
• The committee must laisse with all the establishments to embark on renovations periodically in all the outfits. The committee must use the funds of all the establishments concerned.
• In order to ensure the safety of all government establishments all such outfits such as stadia, tourist centers must be insured against disasters. This way the facilities and their occupants could be compensated when disasters occur.

• To ensure the success of this measure branches of Public Safety comitte must be placed in all government offices to take care of the safety of all buildings and tourist sites in line with our proposals above.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
eanfoworld for sustainable development
abdulai.alhasan@gmail.com/eanfoworld@yahoo.com
0244370345/0208844792/0274853710