The Ghana Institute of Architects (GIA) is pushing for the preparation and possible passage of a local content policy for the construction industry.
They contend that the passing of the bill will guarantee their increasing involvement and active participation in Ghana’s construction industry.
“There is a major action on what we call the local content bill. There’s been years of discussions with the Ministry of Trade and Industry to make it a law but there has to be a certain level of content, locally in all endeavors, whether it is procurement, whether it is labor, whether it is consulting, whether it is knowledge work among others,” President of the GIA, Architect Joseph Hayford told Citi Business News in an interview.
He explained further saying, “So increasingly we are going to be seeing involvement by local partners increasing and when the local content bill is put before Parliament, a lot of people will be working from different fronts, engineers are working, architects are working on it, the oil sector is working on it and so on.”
It would be recalled that the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) also called for the bill to be passed to develop the construction industry into a vibrant one.
The Chairman for Construction Sector of the AGI, Rockson Dogbegah, stated that the capacity of Ghanaian construction firms needed to be capped for the sustainable development of the economy.
Architect Joseph Hayford also added that the bill will transform the architectural space to the benefit of the country.
“By the time we put our efforts together, and present the bill before parliament, you would see a transformation because the law then sets a threshold by which you should start and then on top of that we can work to increase that involvement so it is something that we are working on” he stated.
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By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana.