The State Housing Company has acquired 234 acres of land at Buduburam for the construction of 1,200 housing units with community facilities to make it one of the largest housing projects in the country. The project is one of several others being undertaken by the company including the rehabilitation of old structures nation-wide.

The Deputy Managing Director, Mr Ben Mensah who said this did however not disclose the cost of the projects. He said the SHC's immediate objective was to attract funding for its projects from both foreign and local sources in the form of grants.

This came to light when Alhaji Mustapha Iddris, Minister for Works and Housing paid a working visit to the Company on Monday to acquaint himself with the programmes and projects of the organization.

The visit, the first to the company since the Minister assumed office was also to afford him the opportunity to learn at first hand the problems facing the organization and how to find solutions to them.

During his interaction with the staff, Alhaji Iddris tasked the management to provide affordable low cost housing to both the urban and rural poor. He said government already had a large deficit in the housing sector and therefore it would be wrong to leave some aspects of the housing sector in private hands. He said houses provided by private estate developers in the country were very expensive and many people could not afford.

The minister suggested that SHC should either be divested fully or taken from the Divestiture Implementation Committee so as to attract private capital for the company to expand its operations. He said the partial divestiture was affecting the company's image to attract the needed capital to enlarge its estate housing projects across the country. Alhaji Iddris urged the management to put in place routine maintenance programme at their various estates and housing projects.