A diviner is not needed for one to know things have been economically tough in Ghana for some time now.
For young adults hoping to start a family, the hope is to raise a decent sum to buy land and put up a decent structure to move in given the paying of two year rent to landlords can prove to be a challenge.
With this in mind, the Goldstreet Business set out to figure how much it will cost on the average to put up a two bedroom structure in Accra.
Kwabena Sarbah has inherited land from his parents so would not have to bother about servicing a one plot of land which can cost anything in the region of GHS30,000.00-GHS100,000.00 depending on the location.
This writer visited three cement selling shops to be conversant with the various cement on the market and their accompanying prices.
At shop one, a bag of CIMAF cement is selling for GHS30.00 while GHACEM goes for GHS31.00. A trip to a second shop showed GHACEM going for GHS31.00 while Diamond Cement is pegged at GHS30.00. The sales attendant at the third shop submitted that their CIMAF cement was selling for GHS30.30 whiles their GHACEM Super Rapid was selling for GHS30.50 with the Super Strong pegged at GHS31.00.
Building technician, Ernest Kofi Legbedze who is an Accra Technical University product and Manager of building company Blackfoot Company informed Goldstreet that putting up a 2 bedroom home in Accra required a sum of GHS100.000.00 to GHS130.000.00.
Asked what components will go into such a building; Mr. Legbedze stated: “a two bedroom house will consume about 400 or 500 bags of cement. Sand to be used is measured in cubic metres and given that laterite will be used for the ground filling, about 70 cubic metres or 4 standard sand trucks will be used. About 2500 to 3000 cement blocks will go into the project also requiring formwork calculated in superficials based on the area resulting in the average 100 pieces of 2*4 wood and 100 pieces of boards being used.”
The building technician also mentioned 1 metre square of roofing space required roofing zinc costing GHS460.00 multiplied by the total required.
With water, he submitted a bag of cement needed 70 litres of water for mixing multiplied by the number of cement used.
Given that birds have nest and foxes holes, it only follows that humans must own homes but with poor pay and unguarded spending many have found rather late that their hopes of owning a home becomes unattainable. Should this piece jolt you to see the task at hand to amass the resources needed to put up a simple 2 bedroom structure, this writer would be delighted.
By Michael Eli Dokosi