The Minority in Parliament is calling on the government to halt any moves seeking to turn the abandoned Saglemi Housing project into private development.
The Ranking Member on the Works and Housing Committee, Vincent Oppong Asamoah, alleged that the government plans to offload the housing project to its allies and cronies.
“The only thing is that they just want to reduce the price and then they will sell it to their cronies. They are saying, oh, we are bringing in partners here and at the end of it, it is their people that are going to come in. If you go out there, all state lands and every property is going for sale under the NPP administration. Every property, landed property, is going for sale. Let’s see the end of the NPP administration and we will see the rot,” Oppong Asamoah claimed.
The latest caution by the Minority comes after the Minister for Works and Housing, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, disclosed the plans by the government to secure a private developer for the project within five weeks.
“… I gave instructions to the technical working group that within the next five weeks, it should go ahead with an international expression of interest that is designed to attract private developers who can come in and complete this project for us so that we can put it to use,” Oppong Nkrumah said during an inspection of the project site.
The Saglemi Housing project was initiated in 2012 under the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama government for the delivery of 5,000 housing units at a total cost of US$200 million under an Engineering-Procurement-Contracting (EPC) Agreement with Messrs Construtora OAS Ghana Limited.
According to the government, by the end of the stipulated project execution period, only 1,506 out of the planned 5,000 housing units had been initiated and approximately US$196 million representing 98% of total project funds has been expended.
MA/AE
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