Public education to remedy land disputes
The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Collins Dauda, has noted that vigorous public education on processes involved in land acquisition, was the remedy to the numerous land disputes engulfing the country.
He observed that most of the people who become victims of land litigation, which sometimes result to the employing landguards, had little or no knowledge about the processes involved in acquiring land.
The Minister therefore tasked the various new Land Commissions in the country to make public education on land acquisition a priority on its agenda, and as a step to reduce land disputes and its attendant effects on national development.
Inaugurating the 29-member newly-reconstituted Brong-Ahafo Regional Lands Commission, Alhaji Dauda noted that land issues in the country would continue to be an obstacle to national development, if the bottlenecks associated with land administration were not removed.
The new Lands Commission Act, 2008 (Act 767) has brought the Survey Department, Land Valuation Board, Land Title Registry and Land Commission Secretariat under one umbrella, with four functional divisions, making the new Land Commission a one-stop-shop.
The reforms themselves, the Minister noted, would not necessarily bring about change, but rather it was the people involved in the implementation. “I therefore expect attitudinal change on the part of the staff to ensure the success of the reforms,” he added.
Alhaji Dauda maintained that what the people of Ghana expected was a stress-free process for registering land, and that the commission was expected to reduce bureaucracy, inefficiencies and frustrations of the public, indicating that failure to do so would render all the efforts and good intentions of the reform useless.
He disclosed the government's intention to divest some of the vested lands and lands acquired by state, which are no longer needed, to their original owners.
In the meantime, he directed that the management of the vested lands should be a collaboration between the Regional Lands Commission and the stools, as the vesting order did not extinguish the right of the stools, and subsequently tasked the commission to develop guidelines that would give effect to the directive.
On his part, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr. Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, noted that population pressure, coupled with heightened economic interest had made land so important that all stakeholders in land management must take land issues seriously.
He could not fathom how some people manage to obtain permit to build in places already allocated for certain projects, and urged responsible departments to be up and doing in the discharge of their mandated duties without fear or favour, to ensure that sanity prevailed in the region.
The Chairman of the Commission, who doubles as the Paramount Chief of the Sunyani Traditional Area, Nana Bosoma Asor Nkrawiri II, on behalf of the Commission, thanked the government for the trust reposed in the members, and promised to discharge their duties accordingly.