<<Print>>

Ministers and staff of the current government working at the Osu Castle but who have been operating for months without being provided with state accommodation will have to wait for two more weeks to get housing units, contractors working on state bungalows have stated. Seven months into the administration of President John Evans Atta Mills, scores of the men and women appointed to run the various ministries either as substantive ministers, deputies or staffers still operate from their own rented or built houses to run government business. According to some employees working on government bungalows at cantonments, the plush Accra suburb that hosts most of the sector heads, the bungalows would be ready, latest, in a fortnight. They told newsmen when they visited the area yesterday that renovation works on the buildings were almost completed. Derrick Yaw Nartey, a foreman at the site, said works on some of the bungalows under his purview at the Cantonments and other areas had been completed, awaiting Government�s directives as to who would occupy which. He said, but for the fact that various contractors were hired to work on different bungalows, making progress on renovation works move at different rates, all the bungalows would have been ready days ago. During their rounds, they found out that the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Joyce Bamford-Addo, was also yet to officially move into her official residence, as renovation works there were said to be near completion. Some ministers, the Heritage has reliably gathered, would rather prefer to attend to work from their homes, but there are a number of them who are prepared to move into the state bungalows to work. Though the ministers have not complained about the delay in moving into the bungalows and government business seems not to have been affected, at least for now, the fact still remains that there is the urgent need for the state to house ministers and similar top-notch appointees to facilitate their work at the various ministries and organizations. Media reports have also suggested that salaries of the ministers under President Mills are yet to be processed for payments to facilitate the workings of government. It would be recalled that, in January this year, the Joint Transitional Sub-Committee on the Transfer of Executive Assets agreed that all former appointees of the erstwhile New Patriotic Party administration should hand over their premises to the chief director at the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing before vacating their residences. Government directed that, by April 7, all persons occupying state bungalows should vacate their premises and hand over their keys to the Works of Housing Ministry to make way for the new ministers to move in. Days after the deadline had elapsed, reports had it that a number of ministers of the former regime were still keeping the keys of their residences, making it impossible to start and complete renovation early for the newly appointed ministers to move in.