Ablakwa: It’s immoral for ministers to purchase bungalows

Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa[/caption]

A Deputy Minister of Education, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has described a redevelopment policy which allows ministers of state to purchase their bungalows after leaving office as “immoral and without conscience”.

He said the policy had led to a situation where about one-third of deputy ministers, 40 ministers of state and senior civil servants are without official accommodation.

Mr Ablakwa was commenting on an incident in which some angry youth of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) stormed the Number Two Mango Street property of NPP Chairman, Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey in Accra last Thursday, to protest his purchase of the bungalow.

Mr Obetsebei-Lamptey bought the bungalow in 2008 under the redevelopment policy introduced in 1990 after he had occupied it for eight years during his tenure as minister under the Kufuor Administration.

Mr Ablakwa and Dr Omane Boamah, now Minister for Communications, later took the matter to the Supreme Court, challenging the propriety of the sale of the bungalow but lost the case.

When the NDC won power in 2008, the bungalow was allocated to Nii Lantey Vanderpuiye who was then an aide to the late President John Atta Mills.

Redevelopment policy

Mr Ablakwa explained that the policy that offers state accommodation to ministers and their deputies, top civil servants, nurses, doctors and members of the security agencies, was intended to ensure that they would live close to their places of work so that they could be available at any given time.

He told the Daily Graphic that “when we took the matter to court, we did not even know that we will be in government as ministers.”

“Currently we are ministers of state with some of our colleagues struggling to have accommodation,” he said.

Mr Ablakwa contended that although he and Dr Omane Boamah lost the case in the law courts, Ghanaians had come to appreciate that it was a genuine and right course to ensure that state officials stopped buying their official residences when leaving office.

Source Graphic Ghana News

Ablakwa: It’s immoral for ministers to purchase bungalows