Member of Parliament for Ofoase/Ayirebi and former Works and Housing Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, says progress towards completing the Saglemi Housing Project demonstrates the importance of private-sector participation in the delivery of government projects.
His comments follow President John Dramani Mahama’s announcement during a tour of the Saglemi Housing Project on Thursday, August 20, that the first 700 housing units are expected to be completed and ready for use by March 2027.
Reacting to the development on Friday, August 21, Mr Oppong Nkrumah said he was pleased that the current administration had maintained the private-sector arrangement initiated during his tenure as Housing Minister to revive the stalled project.
He said the development validates the approach adopted by the previous administration to complete the project without committing additional state funds.
“I was pleased to note that, first of all, the process that we went through to use private sector participation to complete the Saglemi project has been upheld by this administration. I was happy to hear that the benchmarks, the first 700 and then the subsequent about 1,000 and 2,000, etc., and then the continuous development of Saglemi, the president has upheld all of those ones,” he said.
“It gives me comfort that the work that was done in that period when I had the honour of serving as Housing Minister and the work that was done by the NPP administration to ensure that Saglemi was resurrected, this time on a path that can be self-financing and sustainable, is being upheld and continued by this administration,” he added.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah also defended the decision at the time to adopt a private-sector approach to completing the project, arguing that the arrangement was properly structured to protect the interests of the state.
“It was a very well-structured transaction with one of the top four accounting firms as our transaction advisors. And we went through a process that ensured that we would not put further state money into it, but private money would be brought in, but state interest and state equity would be protected in it,” he said.
He further alleged that opposition from elements within the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to the private-sector arrangement was politically motivated.
“I, as minister at the time, explained clearly that there was nothing untoward with using a private sector approach to complete Saglemi. It was only partisan politics that our colleagues on the NDC side at the time, when they were looking for power, were playing by trying to heighten some allegations as though there was something untoward going on,” he said.
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