Let’s Read In Between The Lines – Response to the Minister of Works and Housing &

Engineers and built environment professionals have been in focus in the past week for all the bad reasons. The Minister of Works and Housing, Hon. Atta Akyea is said to have mentioned among other issues that priority will be given to foreign engineers on key government projects because of the inability of local engineers to execute projects to the required qualitative standards. He is quoted as saying that “if you hire Ghanaian engineers, they wouldn’t want to do the work right. They cut corners, they inflate figures”. This very damning statement was made when the Minister met the Engineering Council of Ghana. Clearly Ghanaians heard right; that the blame for the litany of poorly executed projects around the country should be put at the doorstep of the Ghanaian Engineer; but not the politician. Could we as a people also push for a taste of his own medicine?

For some reason Engineers could forgive Hon. Atta Akyea, the Honorable Minister for Works and Housing. The statement clearly mixed up the roles of design, supervision, costing and execution of projects. Engineers and most Built Environment professionals i.e. Procurement Consultants, Contractors, Quantity Surveyors, Engineers etc. can tell the difference. It may nevertheless be hazy for non-built environment participants. However, when Hon. Yaw Osafo Marfo who is known to have trained as an Engineer made the similar statement to the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) and it got many of the industry professionals worried and nervy. This piece would try to make the issues clearer and outline with some really structural and historical inactions in our socio-political spheres that has brought this country to this point. This debate has gone on in the corridors of politics and built environment professionals and a public debate could start the exorcism of this canker. We need to get solutions to the delivery of poor public infrastructure and no need splitting heads over this.

The Engineering Council and the Architects Registration Council are two Regulatory bodies that play a critical part in regulating the practice of Engineering and Architecture respectively. The Engineering Council of Ghana (ECG) and the Architects Registration Council of Ghana (ARC) are government regulatory bodies for Engineers and Architects established through the two Decrees 1969, NLCD 404 and NLCD 357 respectively.  These Councils are Agencies of the Ministry of Works and Housing and are responsible for the registration of persons within the Engineering and Architectural Professions; guiding the professions and promoting standards of education, training and practice towards a sustainable Built Environment.

These two agencies are distinctively different from the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) and the Ghana Institute of Architects (GIA). These two institutions are simply professional associations. Since the enactment of these decrees in 1969, successive governments made no effort to establish any of these regulatory bodies; apart from an attempt in General Kutu Acheampong’s era. The GIA and GhIE realized the void and took steps to establish the regulatory agencies to literally hand it to the Ministry of Works and Housing. The Engineering council was only set up in 2015 and a board was established with Ing Wise Ametepe as the first Registrar.

It is worth noting that the ARC was established much earlier in 1997 when Arc. Akofio Sowah and Arc. Kenneth Ampretwum, of blessed memory the President and Honorary Secretary respectively at the time, decided to go ahead without government support to set up the ARC. Prof. Ralph Mills Tettey was named as the first Registrar. The Ghana Institute of Architects used part of their subscriptions to support this Government Agency for a long time until the scheme of service was approved.

With this note, it is clear that since independence, Engineers and Architects have shown beyond all reasonable doubt that they are more concerned about making sure that our infrastructure is prepared by qualified professionals and should be properly supervised than any government in the history of this country since 1969. But the notes of suspicion are growing louder; that the blame for poor quality of our infrastructure in Ghana is to be placed at the feet of Engineers. Whilst Engineers, Architects and other professionals cannot be fully exonerated from this, it is important that we identify other partners-in-crime and start the debate as to why this continue to persist, the absence of effective regulation and legal framework to sanction poorly performing engineers and all other participants for that matter.

The first step towards setting up independent and effective regulatory bodies is to give them the necessary resources and financial support. The Engineering Council has a small office in the Ministry and reliable information is that their financial allocation for 2016 was a meagre Ghs 11,000. The Architects Registration Council continue to practically perch at the premises of the Ghana Institute of Architects who they are supposed to regulate and have also struggled with subventions from government over the years.

The initial key areas that should be looked at are as follows:

• The culture of quality assurance and quality control in our public works has resulted in a high proportion of poor public infrastructure as compared with projects executed in the private sector. The reason is not farfetched. The cycle of decision making and ownership is very clear and ambiguous in the public sector. The opportunity to keep within budget is very key to the success of private investment. This is not so in public sector projects; ownership is vague, budget is fluid and bureaucracy and red tape in procurement affect cost, time and quality of projects. To instill some discipline in these public projects Public Private Partnerships is the way forward. The legal framework for infrastructure corporation would have to be evolved with all stakeholders in order to improve the quality of infrastructure in Ghana. The solution is certainly not handing over projects to foreign professionals.
• The GhIE has recently published a Ghana Infrastructure Report Card 2016. A brilliant piece of documentation of the state of our infrastructure. They took the cue from their counterparts in the United States of America and Canada who use this to engage their governments to improve public infrastrure. The key objective of this to facilitate an engagement with elected officials, political leaders and the general public in order to affect policy and investments in infrastructure in Ghana. The report looked at roads, bridges, power and water supply, their state, maintenance and how sustainable they are. The reason for the poor quality of roads are many; substandard competence, lack of capacity and equipment, delayed payments, high interest rates, poor maintenance culture, poor and inappropriate use of materials. The Engineers in both public and private sector should carry some blame in some of these areas but it would be completely implausible to exonerate the politician and elected leaders.
• The affinity for foreign professionals is growing in Ghana especially in the private sector. Some come along with various project funds and may possibly be part of funding conditions. The laws of this country requires that foreign consultants partner with locally registered professionals to provide inputs on local building codes and local information relevant to the success of the projects. The local counterparts are also expected to guide foreign professionals through statutory concurrence and endorsements of documents for presentation for Permit Approvals. In Architectural Projects for instance there has been a huge influx of Architects from all over the world. This certainly enriches our landscape, however there is an increase in temperate architecture and the effect on our services i.e. power demands due to poor ventilation that come with such designs and other demands inconsistent with our Building Codes.

For instance the newly constructed Ridge Hospital is a purely temperate design constructed in a very humid tropical environment. A very large proportion of the windows are not openable and therefore will only be effective with 24 hour air-conditioning. If this project were constructed in a temperate region it would have been very cost effective. The Accra Sports Stadium is another project which was designed by foreign consultants. At the time some members of the Ghana Institute of Architects raised concerns that looking at the harsh saline environment we have in Accra it was not acceptable to design a steel structure with steel mesh as cladding. Over the years all the mesh is completely rusted and completely depleted and the Ministry of Youth and Sports is grappling with how to maintain the structure. The Accra International Conference Center cannot function without power. Without power it is devoid of light in the interiors and no ventilation. Many more examples such as these can be cited. We can only prevent this with a good and effective regulatory regime.

We cannot have an open door policy without a strong regulatory regime and that is what is worrying about the Minister’s assertions. The superiority mindset that a lot of foreign consultant’s approach projects in developing countries need a strong regulatory regime backed by the state. The introduction of materials that requires testing prior to application and installation is key. All this require a very organized agency with excellent coordination as well as human and financial resources. This is at the very heart of national development.

• The Minister’s mixing-up of the roles and responsibilities cannot be overlooked. We have always argued whether Ministerial roles are principally managerial and policy that may not require a reasonable practical knowledge in their fields they are appointed to.

Article 78 (1) of the Constitution says that “Ministers of State shall be appointed by the President with the prior approval of Parliament from among members of Parliament or persons qualified to be elected as members of Parliament, except that the majority of Ministers of State shall be appointed from among members of Parliament”.

This is part of the constitution is omnibus and lumps all ministers and their explicit roles together except the Attorney General whose roles are clearly spelt out in Article 88 (1-6). As a country that needs to develop, we have failed to back our intent with our constitution. Specific Ministries of importance to national development should clearly outline expectations and objectives towards national development goals.

• “The Ministry has the overall responsibility for the initiation, the formulation, implementation and co-ordination of policies and programmes for the systematic development of the country’s infrastructure requirements in respect of Works, Housing, Water Supply and Sanitation, Hydrology and Flood Control Systems to ensure efficiency of the sector” http://www.mwrwh.gov.gh/).

 Successive governments have ignored the portion that requires “the formulation, implementation and co-ordination of policies and programmes for the systematic development of the country’s infrastructure requirements in respect of Works, Housing, Water Supply and Sanitation, Hydrology and Flood Control Systems to ensure efficiency of the sector”. This will require having regulations that should guide contractors in the execution of projects, penalties and sanctions. As long as this remain absent we have not heard the last of poor construction.

• There are structural weaknesses in the supervising ministries that need to be addressed as well. The licensing agency for professionals fall under the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing. Unfortunately, most of the works are executed in other Ministries such as Local Government and Rural Development under which the MMDAs fall, Highways etc. Generally, one would expect that these ministries should be able to vet faulting professionals and authorize sanctions. For instance, when the Melcom Shopping Mall collapsed in Achimota the investigations by the MMDAs and MLGRD should have revealed the professionals and contractors at fault and recommended sanctions from the MWRWH. This calls for good coordination between these ministries. We however know that this takes forever to materialize. This is clearly a political decision to be made.
• The strong invisible hand of politicians is everywhere in the Construction industry especially in the execution of public works especially at the MMDAs. The traditional leaders also fall in this same category and their word and influence is almost law. Staff are appointed to the various assemblies touting political affiliations instead of their objective to ensure that the laws are obeyed. We all see the resulting quality of the structures built by various assemblies and services rendered. Some structures built by some assemblies have collapsed due to poor construction quality. They influence selection of contractors and push inordinate payments. This is gradually affecting morale and the quality of supervision by Engineers and Architects in the MMDAs and apathy is the order. Some staff are penalized and transferred for ensuring that the right thing is done. As long as these contractors flaunt their connections and contacts with political and traditional leaders, we should not expect the status quo to change and the blame on professionals would not matter.
• The assemblies also cannot go without blame. Permit Applications are froth with corruption and thievery in some assemblies. Development control has become private investments for poorly trained staff some with doubtful qualification that sometimes is embarrassing. Ghana will never win with this crucible of unacceptable practices, human resource, political influences, lack of compliance to regulations and best practices that has made other countries a beauty to experience. A frank debate is the way forward.

A clean politician is certainly an oxymoron in our part of the world. A simple clean and honest blame sharing would have been candid in the discussions with the Engineers by our politicians. For once this issue has vividly been brought to the fore and we should not lose steam until something significant is done towards finding a solution. Let the community of construction participants have a frank debate with our politicians in attendance. The stakeholders are truly many and they must all share the blame.

 It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one ― George Washington

By: Tony Asare, Member of the Ghana Institute of Architects

http://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/enforce-regulations-on-engineering-practice.html

http://www.graphic.com.gh/features/opinion/let-s-read-in-between-the-lines.html

http://www.graphic.com.gh/features/opinion/re-ghanaian-engineers-are-not-trustworthy-minister-of-works-and-housing-says.html

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