New board tasked to transform land administration

Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Inusah Fuseni has launched the national board of the Lands Commission with a call on members to devise policy guidance to transform its bad public image.

 

“The public image of the Lands Commission is not very good. As a members of the Land Commission at the apex level, you should be able to develop a cordial working relationship with the management to redeem the image as soon as practicable.

“There is a high level of mutual suspicion and lack of trust between customary land authorities and the Commission, most especially concerning the management of public and vesting lands. Your expertise would be required to restore confidence in this regard,” he said.

Alhaji Fuseni inaugurating the board in Accra observed that land administration in the country is bedeviled with too many problems.

He cited slow, bureaucratic and expensive systems for registering land transactions, in effect, are serious limitations, which deny opportunities to many people who have neither the time, nor contacts, to demand the services of four divisions of the Lands Commission.

 “The ‘business as usual attitude’ of some staff of the Lands Commission should, within your tenure of office, be seen as a thing of the past,” he said.

Alhaji Fuseni charged the board to have as top most priority the rapid pace of converting peri-urban lands into building plots for brick and mortal.

“We need to check the rapid horizontal development of our cities and implement more sustainable options.

“Our urban centres are gradually growing into big ‘villages’. I will personally follow with keen interest your ability to develop urban renewal strategies or projects to make our cities sustainably grow rather into megacities and not big “villages.”

Alhaji Bakari Sadiq, National Chairman of the Lands Commission, recognising the magnitude of the responsibility and challenges in the sector on behalf of members, assured government of executing their duty in accordance with the constitution.

“We wish to assure you of our unflinching commitment to provide the appropriate oversight responsibility over the operations of the Commission in a manner that will create the suitable environment for the execution of its functions.”

Alhaji Sadiq added: “ We are mindful of the desires of Ghanaians and indeed government, to eliminate the challenges arising from public land management such as encroachment’s and  attendant demolitions that could be avoided by better collaboration between the Commission and other stakeholders on the land scene and a higher citizen awareness of the need to protect state assets including land.”

He called for the need to provide guidance in the evaluation of policies that would respond to matters arising from rapid globalization, environmental degradation which calls for better use of land resources towards higher middle-income status.

“Matters that readily call from policy direction include those concerning the growing phenomenon of large scale land acquisitions for agriculture, rapid urbanization and the phenomenal growth of settlements.

“These are a few of the areas that the Commission would engage itself in advising government on the policy direction.

“Indeed one of our core functions of providing guidance on the development of lands by local authorities and traditional authorities will receive special attention during our tenure,” Alhaji Sadiq stated.