When a country is ruled by a visionless and clueless President, the results are what we are experiencing in this country of 24 million souls. We have seen nothing yet because we have another three years to go while the messes go on unabated. It is going to be a ?Long Walk To Freedom?.
In the beginning or at the beginning, the government told us that the country was facing a housing deficit and that there was the need to rectify the situation. Out of jealousy they abandoned the low-cost houses started by the Kufuor administration and rather chose to go to South Korea to contract the XTS Company to build houses for us and the security services. I had cause to write in this column that the XTS that the government was dealing with was not the real one but a subsidiary of the original one in South Korea.
When the Peoples National Party (PNP) was in power, Dr. Hilla Limann contracted the original XTS to build four brand new cargo ships for the Black Star Line and it was delivered on time. The XTS that the John Mahama?s government was dealing with had gone bankrupt and we told him so. Those boys like Okudzeto Ablakwa, Agyenim Boateng, Felix Ofosu Kwakye, Baba Jamal etc. who were making ugly noise about the XTS deal were born too late to know the difference between the original XTS and the one that the government was dealing with. I did not blame them when they were making the noise because I considered them to be ignoramuses as far as the case of XTS was concerned. When the deal hit the rocks they kept quiet and bowed their heads in shame.
Instead of the government heeding the warning they rather bussed police men to the forecourt of Parliament house and intimidated the honourable men and women in the house to vote for the loan that will help build the houses. We watched helplessly as these innocent and uninformed police men and women surrounded the Parliament house and warned the MPs to vote for the loan or risk being manhandled.
After Parliament agreed for government to access the loan, the late President Mills carried a large pickaxe on his shoulders and went to the site to cut sod for the beginning of the project. The project never saw the light of the day. Mr. Mahama too went to South Africa and returned to tell us that the government had contracted yet another company from that country to come and build 500 units of low cost houses for us and that too turned out to be a hoax. Out of desperation and shame they started demolishing houses of poor Ghanaians. The recent demolishing of houses at Adjei Kojo is simply foolish.
Tema was a fishing village when Dr. Kwame Nkrumah decided to build a harbour there and went on to build the Tema Township. The man knew with the construction of the harbour, there will be the need to build houses for workers who will in no time troop to the place. He did not begin by demolishing the houses of the poor fishermen who were living there. In fact, when Community One was completed, many fisher folks had the opportunity to occupy the houses. Unlike Mr. Demolisher John Dramani Mahama, the man, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah had a vision.
For the two years that the late Prime Minister of Ghana, Professor Kofi Abrefa Busia ruled this dear country of ours he built low-cost houses in almost all the districts in Ghana. He also realized that the population of Ghana was fast increasing and as such there was the need to build low-cost houses for workers. He did not start demolishing houses with the excuse that the land on which the houses were built were not legally acquired.
After the overthrow of Busia, the man who took over the reins of power, General Kutu Acheampong also continued with the low-cost housing project. He started one at Nungua and followed it up with similar houses in many districts. Acheampong continued what Busia started because he was not jealous of the achievement of the man. Acheampong revealed that in the near future he would build the type of houses built at Tema for the people of Nima because Nima is located at the heart of the national capital and so it was improper to allow the place to remain the way it was. The problem of Acheampong was where to relocate the people living at Nima before the construction started. He was murdered with his dream by the founder of the party in power today.
All well meaning Ghanaians must speak up against the way houses are randomly demolished while we still face housing deficit. People acquired the land on which they build their houses from chiefs. If the chiefs have no right to give the land out to the developers, it is not the developers who must suffer. The sad aspect of this insidious farce is that the owners of the houses are in possession of the relevant documents given to them by the chiefs and sometime, the assemblies. A country which is not at war or which is not facing natural catastrophe like earthquake is having its people displaced internally.
Attention Madam Dorothy Asare Kumah, PRO of Tema Development Corporation
And did I hear Madam Dorothy Asare Kumah, the PRO of Tema Development Corporation well the other day when she spoke on air about the demolishing that went on at Tema West Constituency? That the TDC do not need any permit to demolish houses? Madam, you are heartless. Did you see the face of the child who stood beside the demolished house of his parents? In fact, did you hear the wailing of women and children as they carried their belongings to find a place to sleep somewhere in the open? Couldn?t you have done the exercise with a human face rather than going there with fully armed soldiers in armoured cars to demolish houses of unarmed poor civilians? Can you imagine the trauma and pain that these poor women and children faced that day? Anyway, do you have a husband and children of your own? Can you imagine finding yourself in similar situation where you, your husband and children sleep in the open at the mercy of the weather? Habba, Madam!!
You see, in this country where black people live, we use our taxes to pay some people only for them to look into our lean faces and insult us. For now the pendulum is swinging right so Madam Dorothy can have the audacity to spit on our poverty-stricken faces but when the pendulum starts to swing left?.Hmmmm! Yooo!! (I don?t have any ?appetite? for my Havana Cigar today)
By Eric Bawah
