Don't undermine land administration project - Fobih

Professor Dominic Fobih, Minister of Lands and Forestry, warned on Wednesday that Government would not tolerate any behaviour that would undermine the implementation of the Land Administration Project (LAP) meant to bring sanity into land issues. He said there were about 60,000 land cases pending at the courts, adding that the persistence of the problems would impact negatively on the President's Special Initiatives and retard Government's efforts to increase production of goods and services.

Professor Fobih was speaking in Accra at the inauguration of a 21-member Lands Sector Technical Committee (LSTC). Mr Sampson Adjei, Acting Chief Director of the Ministry of Lands and Forestry, is the chairman of the Committee.

Professor Fobih said the Government was vigorously pursuing policy actions recommended in the National Land Policy because of the problems in the sector. The recommendations include facilitating access to land by all stakeholders and ensuring security of tenure and protection of land rights. It also includes the development of capacity in the public, customary, educational, research and private sectors to sustain an efficient and cost effective land administration system. He said the three-targeted areas had led to the birth of the Land Administration Project (LAP), which was anticipated to provide the framework for ensuring better land administration in Ghana over the next 15 years.

Professor Fobih said the inability of customary authorities in Ghana to know the extent of their land boundaries had resulted in further disputes causing numerous problems in land acquisition by investors, adding that this had been captured in the Land Policy Document. The Document also captures the multiple sale of land by different parties claiming ownership, the poor use of compulsory acquisition powers by government agencies and their inability to pay compensation. Other points are the weak management capacity of both public and customary institutions and the threat of land guards.

Professor Fobih said he had selected four key land administrators to oversee each component of the LAP. These are the harmonisation of policy and legislative framework for sustainable land administration, institutional reform and development, improving land titling, registration, valuation and information systems and project management, monitoring and evaluation.

Professor Fobih cautioned against restricting the implementation of the project within the confines of the Ministry. "The actual implementation of the activities of the project will be undertaken by the public land sector institutions, customary authorities, academia and NGOs." He said that civic society was expected to be the key watchdog and to bring their grassroots experience to enrich the implementation of the project. He reminded heads of land sector agencies that they were enjoined to have hands-on approach to managing the project. Prof. Fobih cautioned that he would hold them accountable for any lapses that occurred in the implementation of the project.

Dr Brigitte Heuel-Rolf, Director of the German Agency, GTZ, Accra Office and Mr Douglas Clements, Senior Policy Adviser of Ghana-Canada Food Security Programme of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) pledged the support and co-operation of their organisations for the success of LAP.