Minister of Works and Housing Samuel Atta Akyea, has said the lack of feasibility analysis can be blamed for poor job than by contractors and the huge infrastructural deficit, especially in the housing sector in the country.
According to Mr. Atta Akyea, the country’s infrastructural deficit will keep increasing, if efforts are not made to invest in feasibility analysis which will produce the bill of quantities, pointing to the root cause to end the problem.
A feasibility study is used to determine the viability of an idea, such as ensuring a project is legally and technically feasible as well as economically justifiable and also one importance of a feasibility is based on organizational desire to “get it right” before committing resources, time, or budget.
Speaking at the launch of the 2017 Africa Construction Trends report produced by the auditing firm Deloitte & Touch in Accra, on the theme “A shift to more but less”, he said, the time have come for those interested in helping Ghana close the infrastructural deficit to also be interested in funding feasibility analysis which will help end problems.
“If others want to come and help with infrastructural development, we must first understand the issues because the right feasibility which will tease out the exact problem needs to be done. Why because nobody will make funds available for a feasibility analysis which will produce the bills of quantity to tell what the problem is and help profess the solution which can be solved once and for all and abandon it.
Those who are interested in helping Ghana to undergo serious transformation via infrastructural development should be interested in coming to diagnose which is the real causes of the problem. And so, they should be ready to invest in the cost of feasibility analysis which will reveal the best way to solve the problem,” he pointed out.
The Works and Housing Minister further stated that, “I want to be bold to say that, from the government of Ghana sources of funding, we can never be able to solve or clear the infrastructural deficit we have. It is not possible. And there is no government that can pull the resources to deal with the problem at hand but we can budget reasonably to take care of some of the deficit.”
Mr. Atta Akyea said, Ghana has a huge national problem of money, as it is true that even if the whole budget is given to the Works and Housing Ministry, they cannot solve the current infrastructure problem of Ghana like Housing deficit, coast line issues, drainage and others, as the funds will not be enough.
“We also have the problem of feasibility analysis, because if you give a loan to somebody who does not know what his problem is, is a joke because he will not know how to apply the money.”
According to him, the deficit of infrastructure in Ghana is beyond debate, unless we want to dispute the hard facts, describing the housing deficit as an embarrassing situation for a population that is tipping into 30million with deficit 1.7 million units.
The Works and Housing Minister said, in Accra the biggest problem we have is the drainage system which are not properly done, pointing out that there is no bankable project, infrastructure wise.
