National Cathedral: Lawsuit Looms As Real Estate Company Agitates Over Demolished Building

• A real estate company is threatening to bring a lawsuit against the government for failing to pay compensation for taking its land and building to create space for the National Cathedral project
• Waterstone Realty Limited said for many years, efforts to get the compensation promised have been unsuccessful
• Waterstone had said previously that a land allocated to the company in 2020 to replace the demolished property had been overtaken by National Security

A real estate company has threatened to bring a lawsuit against the government for allegedly failing to pay compensation after demolishing its office building for the National Cathedral project.

Waterstone Realty Limited has accused the government of not responding to promptings to settle the promised compensation for at least two years.

“Going to court is what we are currently deciding on,” Abdul Hafiz, an official of the real estate company told state-owned Daily Graphic.

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He said company executives and the legal team have held many meetings on the next option, the outcome of which points strongly to the law courts.

“If we still do not hear from the government. It is our last option,” Hafiz told the newspaper.

Government has gone silent over compensation

The company explained that it was making an annual rent of $84,000 a year on the two-storey building. However, after the government requested that they vacate the property, it was compelled to refund $54,000 to the tenant at the time.

The government has since the demolishing gone eerily quiet about the payment of compensation.

The company said numerous appeals to the Attorney-General, Godfred Dame, have not helped either.

The company told Graphic Online that at some point in 2020, the Lands Commission wrote to them about plans to allocate another property on a plot of land, measuring 1.26 acres, at the Ridge residential area, but that too has not happened.

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The interesting thing, according to Waterstone Realty Ltd, is that it even paid GH¢1,500 as an administrative fee to the Commission in anticipation of the promised replacement.

In a previous report, the company said in a press statement that the land allocated by the Lands Commission had been taken over by National Security.

IMANI Africa presents 10 challenges with National Cathedral project

YEN.com.gh has reported in a previous report that renowned think tank, IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, listed ten problems with the National Cathedral project in a recent analysis.

The policy brief by the think tank on the controversial project stays away from fundamental questions of politics and morality.

“It does not, for instance, deliberate on the philosophical appropriateness of state funding for single-faith ventures,” IMANI said in the policy brief published on June 26, 2022.

Source: YEN.com.gh