Uniclean goes to court to claim property

Uniclean Limited, a low-cost housing company, has commenced an action at the Accra Fast Track High Court against the State Housing Company (SHC) and 78 others in an effort to reclaim its landed properties at Dansoman and Adenta, both in Accra.

According to the company, the defendants are illegal occupants of Unibrick buildings put up by the plaintiff on four acres of land at Exhibition Site at Dansoman and Plot Number 3, Ayebeng Avenue, Adenta Housing Estate.

The company is, among other things, praying the court for recovery of possession of the Unibrick buildings at both Dansoman and Adenta.

It is also seeking a declaration that the purported lease between the SHC and the administrative body known as Unibrick Co-ordinating Committee and registered at the Lands Registry as No. 3844/1977 is null and void and of no legal effect.

It is further seeking a proclamation that the plaintiff company has an equitable right and interest in the buildings it put up at both the Exhibition Site at Dansoman and on Plot No 3, Ayebeng Avenue, Adenta Housing Estate, Accra.

The plaintiff is as well praying for an order to compel the SHC to execute leasehold instruments in its favour in respect of the two parcels of land on which the Unibrick buildings have been constructed on the usual terms and conditions that SHC grants leases.

Some of the co-defendants are Mr Kwame Anno-Kumi, Lt. Col. B.K. Kusi, Alhaji S. Osman, Mr E. G. Kosivi-Degbor, Commander Baffour Assasie Gyimah, Mr Peter Nanfuri, Mr Jacob Peasah, Mr K. D. Dankwa, Mr Yaw Donkor, Mr and Mrs Yaw Akrasi-Sarpong and Mr George Agyekum.

In its statement of claim, the plaintiff said after 22 years of painstaking scientific soil research under very unfriendly and trying conditions by its founder and manager, Dr Matthew N. Tetteh, it came up with the Unibrick Housing Technology and its housing system.

It said the Unibrick technology consisted of the Unibrick production chemical known as Pudexim, the Unibrick machine known as CLU2000 and soil on site, preferably laterite and water.

The other organisations, the statement said, were the SHC, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Building and Road Research Institute, the Forest Products Research Institute, the State Construction Corporation and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

The statement said as a private company, it used its own resources to put up the Unibrick buildings at Dansoman and Adenta in Accra.

They included one-storey, three-bedroom block self-contained flats; one three-storey block of 18 self-contained flats; one five-storey block of 30 self-contained flats at Dansoman; 18 singlestorey bungalows at Dansoman and 11 singlestorey assorted houses on plot No.3, Ayebeng Avenue, Adenta Housing Estate.

It said the buildings the plaintiff put up at both the Dansoman Exhibition Site and Adenta constituted a research project and the buildings needed the conduction of pathology tests without delay, since any accident occurring now and the near future would be the responsibility of the plaintiff company and the researcher who developed the Unibrick building technology.