Cost of Veep’s bungalow can build 600 houses - Expert

Mr Frank Danyansah, Chief Executive Officer of Danywise Estate and Construction has indicated that the cost of the official Vice Presidential residence was enough to provide 600 housing units for the country.

He said the sum, $13,900 dollars as quoted by Vice President Mahamadu Bawumia with its cedi equivalent of GHS55,600,000.00 could put up about 600 three-bedroom housing units.

The Construction expert revealed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, following the Veep’s revelation that the official vice presidential bungalow cost 13,900,000.00 dollars.

"The amount above can give this country about 600 units of three-bedroom houses which can be given to civil servants or public sector workers teachers, nurses, Police to help them across the various 216 districts.

"It can help reduce our housing deficit. It could be used to build affordable houses for our numerous head porters found on the streets or even health facilities across the various districts," he said.

He said Ghana’s housing deficit stood at 1.7 million units and was projected to escalate into two million by 2018.

This means the government would have to build 190,000 to 200,000 units each year for the next decade to close the gap.

Mr Danyansah expressed his misgivings about the report: "The revelation below shows clearly how misplaced our priorities are."

He called for a probe and further downward review of the project and its associated costs, with a request for immediate scrutiny as he believed justice had not been done on the public purse.

He told the GNA that the document from the Architectural and Engineering Services Limited (AESL) confirmed the $13.9 million-dollar figure quoted by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia as the actual figure for the project.

"The document indicates that a total of $8,179,138.95 dollars has been spent already on the project, with an outstanding amount of 5,789,113.71 dollars left to be paid for the completion of the project," he noted.

He said per the document, the total cost of the project was $13,968,252.66 dollars, covering the cost of stone facing works, hard wood panel doors, external electrification works, sculpture and emblems.

He said he understood upon further review of the document that when minds "are set to create, loot and share, there is always oversight, mostly at stating the Provisional Sums."

Mr Frank Danyansah said the costs of electrical installations, air conditioning, mechanical installations, and swimming pool, as indicated by the document, were $4,050,000 dollars, which was higher than the super-structure ground, first and second floors itself which was $3,800,000 dollars.

Mr Bright Simons, an official of IMANI Ghana, a political Think-Tank attributed the inflation to lack of transparency.