The Ministry of Works and Housing has reported that Ghana has a housing deficit of two million. In former presidents Rawlings and Kufuor’s era, the cliché was that we were in deficit of one million, but the figure has today shot up to two million, as we have just indicated.
The shortfall forced the previous governments to introduce the Affordable Housing Scheme. Though a number of apartments were constructed under the scheme throughout the country, it has still not completely solved the problem.
We also applaud the role of the various real estate companies who have done a yeoman’s job by constructing more houses for Ghanaians to buy or rent. The situation would have been exacerbated if they had not intervened.
But whilst lauding these estate developers and the State Housing Company (SHC) for the roles they have played so far, the two bodies alone cannot help to fix the two million housing deficit conundrum.
The onus, therefore, falls on individuals who have got the financial wherewithal to also come in and help. Unfortunately, the role of armed land guards, especially in Accra and Tema metropolis is thwarting their efforts.
These land guards whose aim is to extort money from land developers use other means like assault, maiming and sometimes killing to achieve their objectives.
The activities of these land guards are common in places such as the Millennium City in Kasoa, Bortianor, Kpone, Katamanso, Ashalaja and many other places. Individuals who have struggled to buy lands at these places do not have peace to develop them. They are under constant harassment by the land guards.
Though the activities of the land guards are illegal, the developers were previously not reporting them to the police because they thought the security agency was in bed with the land guards.
The Chronicle is, therefore, happy that the Dr George Akuffo Dampare’s administration has taken a firm decision to bring to an end the activities of these land guards, who are, in most of the cases, armed to the teeth.
We reported on Monday, this week, that the police had gunned down some land guards and other criminal elements at Bortianor, a suburb of Accra, after they had engaged the security personnel in a gun battle.
The police retrieved from the armed gangs various weapons and ammunitions including an AK 47 assault rifle that are supposed to be used by only the police and sister security agencies.
The Chronicle is certainly not gloating over the death of human beings, but no sane state security personnel holding a weapon will sit down for criminals to kill him or her, when he has the right to self-defence. We believe if these armed land guards had not opened fire, but calmly surrendered, they would be alive today to, of course, face the full rigorous of the law.
What happened to the Bortianor land guards should serve as a strong warning to their colleagues operating in the other parts of Accra and the country that the police are now ready to enforce the law and that it is high time they revise their notes. Ghana is certainly not a lawless country as these land guards are trying to portray to the outside world.
Whilst commending the police top hierarchy for the renewed efforts to fight the canker, they must also make sure that their subordinates become protective. As we indicated earlier, people lost interest in reporting land guard cases because no action was taken to address their concerns.
It is our contention that the police have a big role to play if Ghana is to reduce her housing deficits from the current 2 million to the barest minimum.
They must do this by constantly chasing and arresting the land guards to ensure that the developers also have peace of mind to put up houses and rent them out to those who cannot afford to buy a plot of land to construct their own houses.
