Residents in the Upper East Region are coming to the realisation that the affordable housing project named, Rock Estate located at Pusu Namongo in the Talensi District, may not be completed anytime soon.
Residents in the area were beaming with smiles when the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, cut sod on November 29, 2019 for the construction of a 120 affordable housing units at Pusu-Namongo, in the Talensi District of the Region.
The project was designed to contain 2 bedrooms, 2 detached and semi-detached housing units, 3 bedrooms, and 4 bedrooms after its completion.
To residents in the area and the region at large, the project would have given them employment, as it was intended to offer 3,000 job opportunities and help solve part of the two million housing deficit in the country.
This excitement and hope among residents have been short-lived, as the project never saw the light of day. Only two bedroom units have been constructed and left uncompleted and have been left at the mercy of the weather.
This, coupled with the cutting of sods for new housing projects in the country by the government has ignited a fierce debate between members of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) and members of the largest opposition, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) over the stalled Rock Estate project.
A member of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) Upper East Regional Communication Team, Johnson Ayine, has questioned the moral right of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to talk about the stalled 120 affordable Housing units project.
According to him, the National Democratic Congress, with all its dominance in the region, neglected it when it had the opportunity.
“Let us get the difference; we are not saying that we have delivered, but in terms of thinking of the Upper East, we have done better than them because when they had the opportunity with a minister MP from this region, signing the STX deal without even thinking of giving one unit to the Upper East was a shame, so they lack the morality to talk about it.”
“My analogy is that in the Upper East Region, it is NDC; if Ghana were to be in the Upper East alone, NDC would have been in power forever. Out of the STX housing units that NDC intended building for the Police and the State, did you earmark one housing unit for Upper East?” Mr. Ayine quizzed
“NPP even made an attempt with the private sector to put up a housing unit, and with that alone, we are better than the NDC for that initiative because acquiring the land alone is something; the NDC wanted to build a polyclinic and went and cut sod at where Total 3 is and planted a tree there; Evans Abolga came and uprooted it and said the land is for him; where is that polyclinic; have they been able to build it,” he stressed
He made these assertions when he spoke to Mark Smith on A1 Radio’s Daybreak Upper East show over the stalled Rock Estate project.
However, the Regional Communication Officer of the opposition National Democratic Congress, Jonathan Abdallah Salifu, who was on the show with him, thought otherwise. He argued that it was nothing more than a well-calculated attempt by the government just to take glory and create the impression that the NPP government was building affordable housing units for the Region.
“Today the NPP is telling us that it is a private person, when the president came, he took glory. Read what he said, taking full glory. He didn’t tell us that it is a PPE project and that there is a private man who is doing it with state housing,” he stated.
“You are coming to talk about the STX project; out of the 200,000 that STS was going to build, 30, 000 of it was for police; the Upper East had a share of it; we even came and got the land here; what are you talking about? The SSNIT houses were built during Rawlings time; you can’t run away from that. NPP have never given us one unit,” he added
Until a new hope is restored in the people of the Upper East, they will forever wallow in abyss of hopelessness as far as the Rock Estate housing units project is concerned.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Gilbert Azeem Tiroog|Ghana
