Accommodation - Police need GH¢987.98 million

Page 3: Daily Graphic, June 18, 2009.
Story: Albert K. Salia
THE Ghana Police Service requires about GH¢987.98 million to solve both its acute residential and office accommodation problems by 2011.
The availability of the funds will enable the service to provide decent accommodation for 20,000 officers and men, as well as 329 office facilities across the country for its operations.
With more than 80 of its residential projects at different locations abandoned, the service is living with the irony of housing a large number of its officers in canteens, open workshops, kitchens and uncompleted structures.
About 58 per cent of the nearly 25,000 personnel are without decent accommodation, with most of them housed in “makeshift facilities” such as canteens, open workshops, kitchens and uncompleted structures.
A visit by the Daily Graphic to some of the barracks yesterday showed, for instance, that about 40 junior officers were housed in a canteen, with a single toilet and a bathroom to serve them.
Some of them, who had their mattresses packed at one end of the room, said they slept on the veranda or prayed that some of their colleagues went on night duties to enable them to use their space in the room.
They also bathed on the lawns of the Mobile Force Barracks to enable them to get ready for duty and used the toilet facilities of other officers or waited till they reported for work.
At another end of the barracks, some of the men who were housed in single rooms with their families had created artificial rooms to accommodate their property, while others had their fridges and cooking utensils exposed to the vagaries of the weather.
Records at the Estate Department of the service indicated that majority of police commanders and men resided in rented premises, while some officers had to lodge in hotels for considerably long periods before suitable accommodation could be found for them.
The Police Administration early this week announced the suspension of enlistment into the Ghana Police Service this year due to the worsening accommodation crisis.
An audit carried out in 2007 by the Ghana Audit Service (GAS) on the management of residential accommodation of the Ghana Police Service indicated that the complexity of the housing problem was a major reason for the low morale among the personnel, whose responsibility it is to maintain internal security.
It said there was a backlog of about 7,000 personnel waiting to be accommodated since 2006, while rooms measuring 16 square metres were allocated for use by two police families.
The report recommended that the Police Administration should implement its proposal to use police acquired lands as equity to obtain private financing to develop commercial and residential facilities.
It also recommended that the administration should seek assistance from metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies in its effort to provide accommodation for police personnel in their respective areas.
Although the Police Administration had projected a five-year strategic plan covering 2006 to 2010 to address the accommodation problem by building more residential facilities, it faced a major challenge to the realisation of that goal.
Another challenge is the fact that recruitment into the Ghana Police Service and transfers are not matched with the provision of accommodation, resulting in overcrowding and risk of health hazards in police barracks.
The Police Administration had projected to increase its staff strength to 40,000 by 2010 but that projection requires accommodation for 20,000 police officers, an ambition the administration intends to redeem through new housing facilities at a cost of GH¢448.2 million and the finishing of uncompleted and abandoned housing projects at a cost of GH¢19.7 million.
The Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Paul Quaye, said a strong lobby team had been set up by the Police Administration to target institutions that benefited directly from the work of the police to support in various ways to address the accommodation challenges.
He said he was hopeful that civil society organisations and stakeholders who wished to see the Ghana Police Service perform at its optimum would also support the moves.
He reminded the public that the Police Service was not an income-generating agency, hence the need for all stakeholders to support it.
Mr Quaye said although the government had pledged its commitment to address the accommodation crisis, organisations and individuals must support the Police Administration to achieve its ultimate goal.