REVIEW OF SALE OF BUNGALOWS IN ORDER (APRIL 29, 2009)

THERE is no doubt that over a long period of time, the problem of accommodation has been acute for all manner of people across the country including some public officials whose conditions of service make it mandatory for the state to house them.
Various governments have, over the period, made attempts towards shelter delivery, with the objective of reducing the housing deficit.
Some successes have no doubt been achieved but because of the magnitude of the problem these have tended to be largely negligible.
This is why news that some government bungalows that serve as duty posts for public officers have been sold to their tenants who were ministers of state, private individuals and hotels and the conversion of others into offices for private use is disturbing.
According to the Subcommittee on Transfer of Executive Assets of the Government Transitional Team, preliminary investigations have established that 14 state bungalows had either been sold off to then sitting tenants or demolished and the land transferred to non-public officials.
Since the act breaches Article 284 of the Constitution, which states that “A public officer shall not put himself in a position where his personal interest conflicts or is likely to conflict with the performance of the functions of his office” (Conflict of Interest), the committee recommends that the government should review the sale, which was done while the officials were still in occupation.
In the face of the housing deficit and the resultant headache and hassle that the government, newly appointed officials, and some transferred civil servants entitled to state accommodation face, nothing can be more appropriate than a review of the sale of all state bungalows.
Indeed, as the committee states in its report, government bungalows are not to be sold under any circumstance and therefore the review should aim at taking back what rightfully belongs to the state and, where necessary, as in the case of those that have been demolished, the total cost of the buildings and their contents (furnishings, etc) before the demolition be recovered from all those who will be found culpable.
This is necessary to serve as a deterrent to people who go into politics in the hope that when they are appointed to high public offices, they can use their positions to acquire wealth cheaply.
At the same time, the recovery of those bungalows will assuage the pain of the ordinary people whose taxes went into acquiring those state assets but who, under no circumstance, even if it were legal, would have had the chance to purchase some of those state assets.
It is common knowledge that most of those bungalows that were built in the pre-independence and early independence days cover comparatively very large land sizes.
The reasonable thing to do now, in the face of increased population and dwindling land, is for the state to pull down those bungalows and replace them with modern condominium or high-rise apartments which will make for a more judicious use of those same pieces of land.
These apartments could be given as duty posts to Members of Parliament and other high government officials.