Liberia's struggle to add dignity to the ordinary citizens, especially the poor, is gradually creeping into history books. And this can be attributed chiefly to the efforts of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) led government through the National Housing Authority (NHA).
Hot on the heels of a milestone deal signed with a Bukinafaso firm, GEPAZ, that will witness the construction of 50,000 new homes for those stricken by poverty spread across the country, the NHA has entered into an agreement with Habitat For Humanity International and City Alliance which will see the development of policies that will allow smooth relocation and access to finance for beneficiaries of the housing project.
"This is a unique program for the NHA because we feel that this is the goal of President George M. Weah. When he came to power, he promised to turn the lives of the poor people around. Through this exercise, we have identified and still counting 113 slum community in Montserrado County", NHA Managing Director,DwannaSiryon lectured at the Signing ceremonies in Monrovia.
He said, "Peace Island and West Point are amongst many other slums in Montserrado County. We have endeavored to participate in this program because it is geared towards helping our slum communities. Upgrading the rural areas is a priority of the President. This MOU will focus a lot on policy issues. We are starting early next week because we have a project on hand in West Point. The processes of relocation and the steps involve will be covered under this MOU".
"One key part of the MOU is to ensure access to finance for low income earners to get homes. There are people who make the minimum and they too need to have access to homes. We will make sure that those micro financing be awarded to some of them to make life better for themselves", he stated.
Vijay R. Parmar, Country Program Manager for City Alliance described the agreement as heartwarming for his institution. "Habitat has been one of our co-partners at global level. For us, it is great to see this partnership between the National Housing Authority NHA and Habitat lead to a greater roadmap as we move forward", he indicated.
He emphasized, "We are looking at how to address very core issues in Liberia. One is housing and we are looking at new and interesting areas on how we can look at financing for housing. The discussions are looking at how people can get access to financing in buying properties".
For his part, Matthew Ndote Chief of Party for Habitat for Humanity said the MOU signifies the commitment of the two organizations towards the sheer vision which is mainly facilitating a greater access to adequate and affordable housing to especially low income and vulnerable communities through working with NHA and other institutions of government, communities and private sector.
He said "the program we are implementing is geared towards facilitating increased access to affordable housing through an inclusive approach. And important component of that is bringing on board the private sector who can also contribute significantly in scaling up the work of delivering homes".
"Our work will begin this week. And there are four main components we will focus on and these were informed by the slum upgrading and affordable housing framework which we have jointly developed. We will develop policy guidelines that will enable delivery on improved housing. We will invest efforts in institutional capacity building", he added.
