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The Minister of Water Resources Works and Housing, Alhaji Collins Dauda, has called for more private sector participation in the housing sector to help address the current 1.7 million units housing deficit. Speaking to the Daily Graphic, he said it was not feasible for the government alone to address the housing deficit on the short term and, therefore, called for more collaboration with the private sector under the Public Private Partnership (PPP). He explained that if the government alone had to carry the burden, it would mean providing a minimum of 170,000 housing units annually for a 10-year period, which was not feasible. According to him, the government would engage players in the real estate industry in deliberations to identify the bottlenecks in the sector and address them accordingly to facilitate better collaboration. He said the government would put in place measures that would enhance the relationship between both local and foreign partners to ensure an enabling environment for partnerships. Alhaji Dauda said the government would depend largely on private partnerships to solve the housing problem on the short term. Some interventions Alhaji Dauda said the government was embarking on major intervention measures such as the national mass housing project to ensure the provision of houses to address the deficit. �Some of those projects are being done in collaboration with the private sector,� he said. The government, in collaboration with a private estate developer,Shapoorji Pallonji, is currently building 5,000 affordable houses at Kpone at a cost of $15 million. The first phase of the project at Kpone is expected to be completed by the close of January 2015. Housing Project Alhaji Dauda said the National Affordable Housing Project was also intended to ensure that people within the middle-income class and below had access to affordable decent homes. According to him, the ministry, in 2013, partnered OAS Constotora of Brazil to start the construction of 5,000 houses at Saglemi in the Ningo Prampram District of the Greater Accra Region. He said the Affordable Housing Project, which began six years ago with about 427 housing units dotted across five regions, namely: Tamale, Wa, Asokore Mampong, Koforidua, Borteyman and Kpong, was also ongoing. The minister said the housing units at Borteyman, which were handed over to the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) in March this year, would be completed within 18 months. He said the government had also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Douja Promotion Group (DPG) of Morocco for the construction of 10,000 housing units in Accra on a pilot basis. Alhaji Dauda expressed the hope that those interventions among other affordable housing projects would address the current accommodation problems.