News:
September 7, 2010
The Minority New Patriotic Party in Parliament has again punched further holes into the controversial STX Housing deal, asking President John Mills to terminate the multi-billion-dollar housing agreement approved by Ghana’s Parliament on August 3, in the interest of Ghanaians.
At a News Conference on Monday September 6, the Minority described the deal as “fraudulent” and a major threat to the fragile national economy.
The Minority’s latest outburst about the deal comes at the time the Water Resources, Works and Housing Ministry has rolled out an elaborate plan for the take-off of the housing project, which involves the construction of 30 thousand housing units for the country’s security services.
Addressing Journalists at the Headquarters of the NPP, Minority Leader, Hon Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, said President Mills must pull the plugs on the STX Housing project and instead consider a cheaper way of housing the nation’s security services.
“First, we propose to Government to immediately set itself to complete the five thousand Five Hundred affordable houses which are at various stages of completion. This can be done by locally borrowing a few million cedis. We have been told that the resources need to complete them is less than 50 million cedis. When completed, they could all be allocated to security agencies.”
“Secondly in the medium term, government may come to Parliament with a bill to establish a security service Housing Fund and pay the over 100n million dollars needed to service this 1.5 billion loan every year for twenty years into the Fund and use it to build the houses for our men and women in uniform not only in the barracks, but also houses anywhere that they choose for them to purchase at subsidized interest rates so that they do not retire into penury and homelessness as they themselves characterize their plight”.
“With these alternatives, we do not have to mortgage the country to Korea. We will use local contractors, local materials and employ 100% Ghanaians and our men and women in uniform will get their houses in the barracks and elsewhere after retirement and everybody will be happy and Ghana will have self-Ghana better”.
“These we propose and strongly suggest are better options. If for whatever reasons government is determined and unrelenting to borrow from the Koreans, then may we appeal to the President for the sake of our fragile economy to scale down this loan to a manageable size and combine with the options which we have proposed, the housing could be provided to our security personnel”.
Hon Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu accused the Mills administration of peddling widespread falsehood about the STX deal, warning the country will pay dearly, should the project commence based on the terms of the deal approved by Parliament on August 3, 2010.
“As we have indicated earlier, the Agreement relating to the Supplier’s Credit Facility came to Parliament by Executive approval, in other words, directly from the office of the President. In the face of these patented deficiencies, what conclusions are we to draw? Is it that the President himself an Associate Professor of Law did not read the agreement, or is it that his advisors on the project did not offer good counsel to him? Let the good people of Ghana pass their own judgment”.
“Mr. President, we must save this country from this hunchbacked humongous deal which is good for Korea but bad for Ghana” the statement said. The Minority New Patriotic Party in Parliament has again punched further holes into the controversial STX Housing deal, asking President John Mills to terminate the multi-billion-dollar housing agreement approved by Ghana’s Parliament on August 3, in the interest of Ghanaians.
At a News Conference on Monday September 6, the Minority described the deal as “fraudulent” and a major threat to the fragile national economy.
The Minority’s latest outburst about the deal comes at the time the Water Resources, Works and Housing Ministry has rolled out an elaborate plan for the take-off of the housing project, which involves the construction of 30 thousand housing units for the country’s security services.
Addressing Journalists at the Headquarters of the NPP, Minority Leader, Hon Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, said President Mills must pull the plugs on the STX Housing project and instead consider a cheaper way of housing the nation’s security services.
“First, we propose to Government to immediately set itself to complete the five thousand Five Hundred affordable houses which are at various stages of completion. This can be done by locally borrowing a few million cedis. We have been told that the resources need to complete them is less than 50 million cedis. When completed, they could all be allocated to security agencies.”
“Secondly in the medium term, government may come to Parliament with a bill to establish a security service Housing Fund and pay the over 100n million dollars needed to service this 1.5 billion loan every year for twenty years into the Fund and use it to build the houses for our men and women in uniform not only in the barracks, but also houses anywhere that they choose for them to purchase at subsidized interest rates so that they do not retire into penury and homelessness as they themselves characterize their plight”.
“With these alternatives, we do not have to mortgage the country to Korea. We will use local contractors, local materials and employ 100% Ghanaians and our men and women in uniform will get their houses in the barracks and elsewhere after retirement and everybody will be happy and Ghana will have self-Ghana better”.
“These we propose and strongly suggest are better options. If for whatever reasons government is determined and unrelenting to borrow from the Koreans, then may we appeal to the President for the sake of our fragile economy to scale down this loan to a manageable size and combine with the options which we have proposed, the housing could be provided to our security personnel”.
Hon Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu accused the Mills administration of peddling widespread falsehood about the STX deal, warning the country will pay dearly, should the project commence based on the terms of the deal approved by Parliament on August 3, 2010.
“As we have indicated earlier, the Agreement relating to the Supplier’s Credit Facility came to Parliament by Executive approval, in other words, directly from the office of the President. In the face of these patented deficiencies, what conclusions are we to draw? Is it that the President himself an Associate Professor of Law did not read the agreement, or is it that his advisors on the project did not offer good counsel to him? Let the good people of Ghana pass their own judgment”.
“Mr. President, we must save this country from this hunchbacked humongous deal which is good for Korea but bad for Ghana” the statement said.