About 7.5 million houses and properties across the country are to be embossed with special address plates as part of the effort by the government to leverage the digital property address system to build a national database.

The exercise, which has already begun in some parts of the country, will be in two phases, with the first phase covering four million properties, while 3.5 million properties will be embossed in the second phase.

The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, witnessed the embossment process at the Miracle Fruit Link at Adentan Housing Down and the Amankani Avenue at New Legon, both in the Adentan municipality in the Greater Accra Region, yesterday.

He said the government had begun discussions with Google, and that “sooner rather than later, we will upload Ghana’s digital address database onto Google Maps”.

Dr Bawumia said the government was determined to solve the addressing challenge which had faced the country over the years, thereby hampering development.

The Vice-President was accompanied by the Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Mr Dan Botwe; the Municipal Chief Executive for Adentan, Mr Daniel Alexander Nii-Noi Adumuah, and a Deputy Director of the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA), Mr Chapman Owusu-Sekyere.

Challenges in location

Dr Bawumia said it had always been difficult to give directions to ambulances, the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and the police on the proper location of complainants in times of need.

“So as a government, we decided to leverage what has already been done in the context of the digital address system to provide unique addresses for every house or property in the country. So the LUSPA, formerly the Town and Country Planning Department, has been working closely with the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development and the respective metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs).

“They have identified about 7.5 million properties and houses in the country, and so the idea is to make sure that each one of the properties has a unique address. And the first phase of the project is what we are witnessing now.

“This will give us a very rich database of all properties and people in the country. Coupled with the national identification cards, it will give us unique identification for individuals and properties,” he said.

Collaboration

The Vice-President said through a collaboration between the local assemblies and the LUSPA, all streets in the country had digitally been named and buildings given identification numbers.

He said properties, including houses, had been given unique addresses, and that each embossment would contain a house number, a street name and a digital address, which were also on the Ghana Post digital address system, as well as a QR code.

The Vice-President said the exercise was free of charge and entreated the people to bear with the assemblies when they went to emboss the plates on their houses or properties, as he described the project as transformational.

Dr Bawumia acknowledged the role played by the erstwhile Ministry of Special Initiatives in getting the project that far and urged the Local Government Minister to ensure it was completed on schedule.

The first step the government took, as part of the effort to build a national property database, was institute the national digital address system which helped to generate unique digital addresses for every home.

The address is matched with the house number and the street name.

A QR code is then generated, after which plates are printed and installed.