A shanty settlement in Accra
Government and local administrations have been asked to enforce minimum standards in the construction of houses and provision of basic facilities such as cooking areas and toilets in houses.
A National Analytical Report on the 2010 Population and Housing Census released in Accra recently by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) said government should ensure that policies are geared towards the modernization and expansion of compound houses, which accommodate more people than the current individual structures.
The report, which further recommended that government should provide facilities such as pipe borne water and sanitation services in new suburbs in urban areas, said sanitation in old settlements should be improved.
Ghana?s rural areas accounted for 57.7 percent of the housing stock in 2010 as against 65.9 percent in 2000.
The report attributed the decline in the housing stock in rural areas to the increase in urbanization in the Upper East, West and the Volta regions.
It stated that three regions recorded high proportions of rural housing stock, with Upper West recording 85.4 percent, Upper East with 79.2 percent and Volta Region recording 72.2 percent.
Greater Accra Region however experienced the highest annual growth rate for the first three inter-censal periods from 1960-2000 while Upper East Region recorded the lowest growth in housing stock for each of the inter-censal period.
?With reference to the 200-2010 inter-censal period, the three regions with the highest annual growth rates were Ashanti (5.6%), Greater Accra (5.0%) and Upper West (4.6%) while the three regions with the lowest annual growth rates were Upper East (2.5%), Northern (3.7%) and Western (3.8%),? the report said.
It further noted that for the first time more than 50 percent of Ghana?s population live in urban areas.
It indicated that the number of houses in Ghana increased between 2000 and 2010 from 2,181,975 to 3,392,745 (4.4 percent), representing the highest annual growth in housing stock in Ghana since 1960.
The report also observed that the mean number of persons per house in Ghana decreased from 10.0 in 1984 to 7.3 in 2010, adding that there were variations in the number of persons in each house for 2010.
Volta Region recorded the lowest with 5.3 persons and Northern Region with 9.6 persons, highest.
BY Lady Agyapong
