LASG engages stakeholders on construction of 100,000 homes

The Lagos state government, in partnership with stakeholders in building industry has started working on the modalities for the construction of 100,000 houses.

The stakeholders are the Lagos State Ministries of Housing and Lands, EchoStone Nigeria, a property development firm, Family Homes Funds and Lagos state Building Investment Company (LBIC) Plc.

Others are Lagos state ministries of justice, physical planning and urban development, the Lagos state urban renewal sgency and various sister agencies of the state government.

The stakeholders converged at the “transaction structuring workshop for proposed 100,000 affordable housing programme in partnership with Lagos state government” to fashion out ways of starting the housing project in June.

At the workshop, survey plans, layouts, land acquisition, encroachment issues, dealing with land grabbers, financing, security, regularization of titles were extensively discussed.

The government, developer and financiers agreed for the lawyers to proffer solutions to the challenging areas in order to reach a compromise that would be beneficial to all.

The state Commissioner for Housing, Mr Gbolahan Lawal, said the state government had an initial plan to construct 20,000 houses by year 2020.

Lawal said EchoStone was given the contract to build 2,000 out of the 20,000, adding that the firm had demonstrated capacity to do more by introducing a technology that speed up delivery.

The commissioner said investors had confidence in Lagos state government because it had a reputation for continuity.

He said the state government was going to target old housing schemes and abandoned lands in some areas to be aquired for the project.

The EchoStone’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Sammy Adigun, said the firm had deployed its technology which used cellular light cement with form works to mass produce houses globally and was training local artisans in its ongoing project in Badagry.

He said the firm had already trained 67 artisans and would need to train 20,000 more to participate in the proposed 100,000 houses to be built.

“We have trained 67 and need to train more because with this technology, artisans must do the work with precision which local artisans are not used to,” he said.

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