The Acting Rent Commissioner, Frederick Opoku, has warned private hostel operators that licences issued by the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) do not exempt them from Ghana’s rent laws.

Speaking on the Joy FM Super Morning Show, during a discussion on the Rent Control Department’s crackdown on what it describes as exorbitant hostel fees, Mr Opoku said private hostels remain subject to rent regulation regardless of the amount invested in their businesses.

“Private hostels are not outside the law, simply because they are investors,” he said on Wednesday, August 19.

He explained that the Rent Control Department has the legal authority to assess rents across the country, including charges imposed by hotel and hostel facilities.

“Under Section 10, rent control has a jurisdiction to assess all rent in this country, including hostel facilities,” Mr Opoku said.

According to him, hostel operators cannot unilaterally decide how much to charge without regard to the law. He urged them to apply to the Rent Control Department for an assessment if they want to operate within the law.

“Deciding how much you charge does not fall within your individual powers. The law behooves them, if they want to be fair and law-abiding, they should make an application for assessment.”

Mr Opoku said the department was already receiving applications from students over hostel charges and insisted that private hostels would eventually be assessed.

“Students are now making applications today at the Rent Control, and I am telling them that all of them will be assessed one by one sooner or later,” he said.

He also sought to clarify what he described as a misunderstanding over the different institutions that regulate private hostels.

He acknowledged that the Rent Control Department does not have exclusive authority over every aspect of hostel operations, noting that bodies such as the Ghana Tourism Authority and the relevant planning authorities have separate regulatory responsibilities.

“Hostel regulation does not mean regulating everything about hostel,” he said.

However, he said that the involvement of the GTA does not remove private hostels from the scope of rent legislation.

“The fact that GTA licenses them does not tell them that they are not under the framework of the rent laws of Ghana,” Mr Opoku said.

He was responding to arguments from some hostel operators that their charges reflect the cost of constructing and financing their facilities, as well as agreements reached with universities.

Mr Opoku said such considerations did not override the law.

He cited private hostels on the University of Ghana campus as an example, saying some operators had obtained long-term leases on university land and invested heavily in constructing their facilities.

He said he recently visited the University of Ghana, Legon, where he learnt that some private operators had secured leases of university land for periods of up to 40 or 50 years.

According to him, the university’s ability to influence hostel prices was limited by the terms of those agreements.

He said that the level of investment made by a hostel operator cannot be used to claim exemption from rent regulation.

“Ghana is a country of laws. And that if you are operating a business, it does not matter how much you have invested,” he said.

Mr Opoku added that investors should have considered the country’s legal requirements before committing funds to hostel businesses.

“Before you went for the money from the bank, you should have read the law. Know that I’m going to create a hotel business, and that I must work within the parameters of the law.”

He said that market forces such as demand and supply could not, on their own, determine hostel charges where the law provided for rent assessment.

“I believe, and also I associate myself with the economic jargons of demand and supply. But in the laws of the Republic, the rent law is clear,” he said.

Mr Opoku further rejected claims that private hostel operators could not be regulated because they were licensed by another government institution.

“You cannot make yourself exclusive for the fact that an entity has given you a licence,” he said.

He said the Rent Control Department would act within the law and urged hostel operators and their lawyers to familiarise themselves with the relevant provisions.

“The law is the law. And they must stay put and respect the law,” he said.

Mr Opoku described claims that private hostels cannot be regulated under rent laws as “laughable”, adding that operators should properly examine the legal framework governing their businesses.

“It is laughable. It is out of the fact that they are ignorant about the law,” he said.