Friday, 20 July 2001 -- Fifty bungalows allocated to some Ministers of state are expected to be occupied within the next three weeks, the Works and Housing Minister, Mr Kwamina Bartels, disclosed in Accra on Thursday.
Mr Bartels was reacting to an earlier report by the Ghanaian times that two-and-a-half months after former Ministers were ejected, the bungalows are still unoccupied, giving thieves a field day.

He said that contracts for renovation were awarded to 50 contractors who were supposed to have begun work on Wednesday.

The initial cost of the project is ?1.56 billion.

The Minister explained that with the lessons learnt from the rehabilitation work at the Castle, the President, Mr John Agyekum Kufuor wanted rehabilitation of the ministers' bungalows to be done with open tender.

Consequently, the Public Works Department (PWD) was tasked to assess the total cost of the rehabilitation, which took time to complete. After the assessment, interested people were asked to bid for the contracts, which also took some time to complete. In all, 400 bids were received.

He stated that his ministry, the PWD and other stakeholders had to evaluate all the tenders before contracts were given out and that took about two weeks to complete.
Mr Bartels said that the contractors selected were expected to complete the rehabilitation work in two weeks to enable the Ministers move in.
Even though, the Ministry engaged police officers, together with PWD security officers, it had not been possible for the Ministry to provide 24-hour security services at all the bungalows and that had resulted in the theft of property in the bungalows, he said.