Maintenance of Residential Buildings of Selected Public Institutions In Ghana

Abstract

Public residential buildings represent significant investment of tax payers’ money, hence the need for their preservation. Owing to the neglect of maintenance practices in the country, many public residential buildings are in the state of disrepair. The purpose of this paper is to examine the maintenance practices being employed on residential buildings of public institutions within the Cape Coast Metropolis. The field investigations focused on the Ghana Police Service (GPS), Ghana Prisons Service (GPS) and Ghana Health Service (GHS). Bungalows, block of flats and single-unit houses were the three housing types defined for data collection and analyses. A mixed sampling technique was used to sample 179 buildings for the study, by means of stratified, systematic and two-stage cluster sampling techniques. The findings revealed that 75.9 percent of buildings surveyed needed some form of maintenance to put them in good condition. With regards to housing types, bungalows were found to be in good condition. The study makes the following conclusions: that public institutions must embrace preventive maintenance practice as a high priority rather than unplanned maintenance; managers are to oversee periodic inspections of buildings and create inventory of building components and facilities for effective maintenance; there is the need for the establishment of a maintenance fund to maintain public buildings; and a national policy on maintenance should be formulated and implemented to protect public buildings in the country.