Mr Sylvester Darko(right),Snr Scientific Officer,HSD conducting Mr Atta Akyea (second from left) and his entourage round Photo: Ebo Gorman
Government is to give contractors, building materials instead of money, to complete housing projects that have stalled across the country, Mr. Samuel Atta Akyea, Minister for Works and Housing has said.
“Because we have seen that sometimes when the money comes into the hands of the Ghanaian contractors, that is when they want to do weddings for their daughters and travel.
So now we’re going to buy the materials. This week, what is your raw material needs? We dump it for you and we superintendent to ensure you’re on schedule so that we complete all the houses…” He said.
The Member of Parliament for the Abuakwa South disclosed this yesterday after he visited three agencies under the ministry; Engineering Council, Architects Registration Council and the Hydrological Department, in Accra.
He said the ministry had, in consultation with the Architectural and Engineering Services Limited (AESL), determined the quantity of building materials needed to complete all the projects.
The move, he said was part of efforts to complete such projects in Ho, Asokore Mampong, Koforidua, Kumasi and others that were started as far back as Former President John Kufuor’s tenure, before new ones would be started.
Touching on quality of Ghanaian engineering and why they were often sidelined in government projects Mr. Akyea said some of them performed poorly when put in charge of government projects.
He said some of them cut corners, inflate figures and execute shoddy work just to enrich themselves and that in as much as government wanted to give Ghanaians the opportunity, it would not condone these acts.
He charged the Engineering Council to scale up the registration of practitioners to crack the whip on them and bring sanity in the engineering sector and advised engineers to build their capacities and improve themselves.
He urged all the agencies visited to step up efforts to undertake their mandate assuring that government would do its best to address their respective challenges.
At the Engineering Council, the head, Mr. Wise Ametepe, enumerated its challenges to include lack of staff (currently it has only three staff), accommodation and office furniture.
He said the council was preparing a professional register of engineering practitioners; among other plans, to successfully regulate the practice in the country.
At the Architects Registration Council (ARC), the head, Madam Stella Arthiabah said the council was reviewing its laws to enable it effectively clamp down on the increasing rate of charlatans in the Architectural space.
She said they were made up of both Ghanaians and foreigners and they were designing buildings were not allowed to and that this was one of the causes of building collapses.
She called for a national policy to make the profession attractive as many of graduates were crossing carpets to other fields warning that the country may soon rely on foreigners to design simple structures.
For his part, Mr. Hubert Owusu Ansah, Head of the Hydrological Department appealed to government to, among other requests, restore the end of service benefits that were stopped when the department was carved out of the AESL.
By Jonathan Donkor
Read Full Story
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Google+
YouTube
LinkedIn
RSS