After 100 Years � AMA Gets Six-Storey Office Complex

After so many years of operating its offices in a colonial building behind the Bank of Ghana on the High Street in Accra, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has taken a giant step to move into a modern office complex. The sod-cutting ceremony, which came off yesterday in the heart of the Central Business District of Kinbu, marks a loud achievement which has eluded many metropolitan chief executive officers who at various periods were at the helm of affairs. The new office complex, which will be sandwiched by the Novotel hotel, the Assembly Press and the Tema station, will be finished in 12 months. The six-storey building is being constructed at a cost of GH15 million by Dream Reality, a construction firm registered in Ghana in 2007. The Mayor of Accra, Dr. Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, who defied yesterday�s downpour to symbolically cut the sod for the start of the project, said it is a new beginning in the life of the Assembly. According to him, out of the six-storey, the AMA will, after the first three-storey�s, take up the costs of the remaining three-storey�s to develop. The laudable achievement of building the office complex adds up to the many developmental projects which have been seen in the last five years under the current mayor, particularly in the construction of schools. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly, since it moved into the current building in 1889, has never seen any office change. Some of the Assemblymen and office staff were full of joy since they have been constrained by space and worked in very uncomfortable space where they shared desks and offices. Giving details of the architectural designs, Mr. Kharim Ibrahim, the managing director of Dream Reality, revealed that the office complex which is being built on a 4,000 square space will have the ground floor housing the main assembly hall. The first floor, he added, will house offices such as the registry, library with state of the art office facility, adding that the second floor has been designed for the Mayor Quarters and that of the coordinating director of the Assembly. In all, there will be space for 200 cars and the Kinbu garden will equally see a facelift as part of the designs.