Land Administrative project under review

Accra, Sept. 5, GNA - A two-week mid-term review programme of the Land Administration Project (LAP) got underway on Monday at Shai Hills with a call on stakeholders to make proposals for the re-structuring of the project to meet the immediate needs of the people. The five-year pilot project is aimed at harmonizing land policies and legislative framework with customary law for sustainable land administration.

It is to undertake institutional reforms and capacity building for comprehensive improvement in the land administration system, as well as establish an efficient, fair and transparent system of land titling, registration, land use planning and revaluation.

Professor Dominic K. Fobih, Minister of Lands, Forestry and Mines, who opened the review workshop, said the Land Administration Project (LAP) had helped to reduce cases before the courts from 37,000 to 7,000. Prof. Fobih said the reduction in the number of cases had been achieved through the support of LAP to the Judiciary. He said the goal of the LAP was to enhance economic growth and reduce poverty through improved access to land and enhanced security of tenure.

"Within this broad goal the objective of the intervention is to develop a sustainable land administration system that is fair, efficient, cost effective, decentralized and increasing land tenure security," he said.

Prof. Fobih said when the Project was launched in October 2003 there were great expectations that all land problems would be resolved in a few years.

He said the designers of the Project knowing that there could not be quick fixes thought it wise to implement a pilot phase that would be used to test the methodologies, develop innovative strategies and lay the infrastructure for the reforms.

He said it was for this reason that the mid-term review offered the Government and stakeholders the opportunity to review the Project and to assess if it was being carried out in line with its objectives and underlying philosophy.

Prof. Fobih said because the Project was the first of its kind in the land sector, its initial start-up activities were slow. However, there have been significant achievements in some of the components including Government approval to the proposal to reform the land sector agencies under the Lands Commission. He said the legislative and institutional reforms had also reached the drafting stage and a drafting committee made up of key stakeholders had been constituted.

Prof. Fobih said in line with improvements in deed registries the number of women, who were registering their deeds, had increased. Touching on the challenges to the Project, Prof. Fobih said the capacity of the implementing agencies to integrate the project into their daily routines had proved to be Herculean.

"A lot of effort was spent in building capacity in the preparation of work plans, budgets, procurement plans and monitoring and evaluation. This capacity building exercise, though useful, affected the start-up of the Project, resulting in delays in the implementation of some of the activities."

He said baseline indicators for monitoring progress were not ready at the inception of the Project, making the measurement of performance difficult.

The Minster said donor coordination and harmonization had been a challenge to the Project.

"Some of the donors have ring-fenced their support; others are financing similar activities but in different locations, making the procurement process relatively difficult," Prof Fobih said. Dr Odame Larbi, Project Director, LAP, said corruption in land administration could be reduced considerably if the Project were able to achieve its target.