Street Naming In The Offing

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (LGRD), in collaboration with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) will soon embark on street naming and property addressing system in the capital. The exercise, which would be extended to the entire nation, forms part of measures being implemented by the government to restructure and properly demarcate the cities and towns in the country. The exercise is expected to start with a pilot project in three constituencies in the Greater Accra Region. The system which pertains now in our address system is inconsistent where people use trees, kiosk, plantain sellers, KVIP�s etc as directional signs, for emergencies. In an interview with Peace FM, the Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Hon. Elvis Afriyie said, in the Western countries, it is very easy to locate places since all the streets have names and properties have permanent addresses. In our own situation, it is not so, streets do not have names and properties do not have addresses therefore in locating a place, one has to use popular places around like a school, a hospital and sometimes other objects like a shop or a tree. In this light, the naming of streets and addressing will help people to locate places easily and also help in developing this country. The police will get easy access to areas where there is an emergency. He also said that collecting of property tax has always been a problem in this country since the buildings are scattered and people build any where and anyhow. The recent flood is clear evidence of the situation where many people have built in waterways. This exercise will help in collecting taxes to develop the country. To make this possible, a system called digitized area topography has been adopted to carry out this exercise. This system is such that every building in an area can be located on a computer making it easier to name them.