NO SAFE PLACE…

The Public Relations Officer of the Rent Control Department, in an interview with JoyNews television station, has revealed that it is illegal for landlords to increase rent rates without the prior assessment and approval of the Rent Control office. The official of the Rent Control Department has revealed that failure to pay a month’s rent was enough grounds for a landlord to initiate eviction processes against a tenant.

I am glad by this attempt of the Rent Control Department to stamp up its regulatory authority. I have been astonished at the apparent inertia and ineptitude on the part of the department in enforcing rent laws in the country.

Housing is a sensitive political issue everywhere in the world but in our highly impoverished society where it is estimated that we face a housing deficit of some two million units, the issue is one of existential importance.  To close the gap, between 190,000 and 200,000 housing units would need to be built at a cost of $3.4bn a year over the next decade.

Ghana’s rental system is virtually broken, and I welcome every effort of the Rent Control Department to bring some sanity to the sector. However, as long as demand far outstrips supply, I am very skeptical of the ability of such drives to bring sanity to the system.

While I recognize that the fiscal constraint of public finances makes it improbable that Ghana’s government can invest the needed capital to build two million new houses to bridge the country’s housing deficit. It is also important to state that, the government must do more to make the acquisition and provision of affordable housing units easier for the average Ghanaian. The dire situation of provision of affordable housing in Ghana has reached an epic crisis level that, the need for housing assistance cannot be overemphasised.

With the rapid urbanization confronting the country now, it has become imperative to look at this issue urgently now. The African Development Bank estimates that 55% of Ghana’s population are now urban dwellers.

While the National Rental Assistance Scheme (NRAS), announced in the budget statement read in March, is laudable. I am not sure if that is enough to deal with the menace. The scheme is envisaged to be funded by the government with an initial investment of GH¢100 million. The scheme hopes to attract additional investment from the private sector, in order to provide low-interest loans to Ghanaians to enable them pay rent advance.

However, in order to qualify for this soft loan assistance, the applicant must be employed with identifiable and regular income. How many of those in the actual desperate need of housing assistance can meet those criteria? This scheme risk exacerbating the phenomenon of income inequality.  It also risk legitimising the illegal practice of payment of rent advance beyond the legally defined period.

The new rent control act must reflect the reality of the market now and engage landlords in a constructive manner such that the mass disregard for the act as it pertains now will be a thing of the past. The digitisation of the operations of the Rent Control Office is long overdue. A database for all landlords, tenants, and their tenancy agreement, linked with identifying features like the National ID numbers and digital addresses of these properties can make monitoring easier.

In the meantime, the government must as a matter of urgency complete the Saglemi housing project and hand it over to the security services for use by our security officers. It is gladdening to observe that finally, some prosecution is going to take place with regards to the transaction that saw the number of housing units to be built reduced from 5000 to 1412 at the same cost of 200 million dollars without recourse to parliament.

The newly appointed Special Prosecutor, Mr Kissi Agyebeng, was vetted by the Appointment Committee of parliament last week. One question posed by the minority leader piqued my interest in the subject of unexplained wealth.

The Special Prosecutor nominee defined unexplained wealth as the situation where a person cannot explain the source of his/her wealth as against the lawful income he/she earns. Ghanaian law as it stands now is very weak on the question of unexplained wealth for obvious reasons. Indeed, there may be a few who would scoff at the idea of a law on unexplained wealth due to our historical experiences, but I believe the time is right for us to take a second look at the legal regime governing the question of unexplained wealth.

Under the current legal regime of the country, unexplained wealth is not a criminal offence. However, any attempt to criminalise it would have to involve an amendment to the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) and the Special Prosecutor Act, 2017 (Act 959). It remains to be seen if parliament is minded to the urgent need for such legislation despite the public pronouncements of the minority leader on the issue.

A law on unexplained wealth fashioned on the model of the UK version introduced in 2017 under the Criminal Finances Act will shift the burden of proof on public servants and private individuals to explain the sources of their wealth; failure to do so which would lead to prosecution. A new Ghanaian law on unexplained wealth modelled after the UK’s could fill the enforcement gap left by the asset declaration regime of the 1992 constitution.

I was in Sunyani last week for a funeral. I spent two days in the city and I must say Accra as our capital city doesn’t give a fair representation of our country. It was a pleasant experience to see street lights working perfectly on all the major roads. Traffic management within the city appears very well managed though I must warn you about the atrocious driving habits of some of the commercial taxi drivers.

For a moment, I could be forgiven for thinking we are not saddled with the menace of single-use plastics because the parts of Sunyani I saw was completely free of that. It is an incredibly neat seat with such a lively nightlife. Of course, I am not going to tell you about how we went out on a Friday night at 8pm and got home at 5am, Saturday morning. Definitely make a date with Groovy Friday’s at the Groovy Pub. You are definitely going to enjoy the music and the khebab.