WORKS AND HOUSING MINISTER CALLS FOR EMBRACEMENT OF NEW TECHNOLOGY IN HOUSING
The Honourable Minister of Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea, has called for embracement of new technologies in the housing industry in order to reduce the cost of building and long period it takes to build a house.
The Minister was speaking at the public presentation of Clever House Construction Technology which was used in building a 3-bedroom model self-contain house in seven days by Clever House Africa Limited and Racsopat Ghana Limited at Achimota in Accra.
According to Honourable Atta Akyea, gone were the days when people queue at the post office to make calls to relatives in abroad but now with the advent of new technologies such as mobile phones, one can talk to somebody overseas within a second.
He said just as people have accepted smartphones in modern days, it is the same way people must embrace new technologies in the housing industry because time has changed and therefore, the era of construction of housing with blocks, mortar and iron rods must change if Ghana wants to develop.
The technology is a German engineering system designed to fix the huge global housing deficit and to meet demand for affordable high quality housing.
The Clever House Technology is also invented, approved and certified in Germany for its superiority to the traditional housing construction technologies in terms of strength, durability, quality, resilience to weather conditions, sound and earthquake.
The Minister commended Racsopat Ghana Limited for the technology and partnering the Ministry to roll out affordable housing for Ghanaians across the country and said ‘this is a ground breaker in terms of speed and cost as measured against 2 million housing deficit, this is the way to go’.
Honourable Samuel Atta Akyea, stated that he is making efforts toward using the technology to construct more affordable housing units within the shortest possible time to enable workers pay and own them with a warranty which spans 25 years.
He explained that affordable is the ability to pay and therefore Government is working hard to create a good mortgage system so that people can use mortgage arrangement to buy houses in installmental basis for a period of time.
On his part, Mr. Julius Kofi Manu, Chief Executive Officer of Clever House Africa, said the technology will bring a huge drop in the cost of construction, materials and labour as compared to the traditional method of building.
He disclosed that the architectural design of the planned affordable housing units was put together by Ghanaians, adding that an industry will be set up to produce the materials in Ghana and also train Ghanaians on the technology which will go a long way to create employment.