We need a secondary city at Kasoa to ease housing pressure on Accra

The government has been urged to consider laying the foundation for another city to ease the housing pressure and congestion in Accra.

A Secondary city often follows after a primate city and can be seen in the urban hierarchy. Secondary cities have between “500,000 to 3 million inhabitants, but are often unknown outside of their national or regional context.

Speaking on Citi TV’s The Point of View, the Programmes Officer of an organisation known as the Peoples’ Dialogue on Human Settlements, Salifu Abdul- Mujeed, said the state could look towards Kasoa for this solution.

“There should be that conscious effort to create a market that absorbs the movement, otherwise everybody would want to be in Accra… If you look at Kasoa; why won’t we be thinking of creating a secondary city away from Accra.”

This secondary city could reduce the number of persons that migrate to Accra for business.

“You should be looking at absorbing the pressure from the city. Now if we could look at creating a catchment area, a market to draw the population or the attraction of Accra as a business enclave that makes everybody want to be in Accra. Draw the opportunities out of Accra.”

“Now if you do that, almost all the people who want to move from the Western Part through to Central and coming into Central [Region] and coming into Accra to look for jobs, even to sell, they will stop somewhere there,” Mr. Abdul- Mujeed added.

The concerns with housing in Accra, wzs reinforced in a Citi News report which noted that thousands of Ghanaians have been forced to find shelter in kiosks because of the absence of affordable housing.

The alternatives contribute to the growing slums in Accra.

At Spintex, one of the busiest parts of the capital, several of such shanty towns, which have become known as ‘Kiosk estates” are commonplace.

Mr. Abdul-Mujeeb noted that his organisation had seen over 260 informal settlement areas in Accra alone