HFC Land guards on rampage

...As Tema Reg. Police Waiting For Blood-Bath To Act

Residents of Atadeka, a suburb of the newly created Kpone katamanso district assembly were gripped with fears and panic when a group of land guards invaded the offices of a real estate company in the area, Setho Classic Engineering Company Limited.

The criminals who have been allegedly recruited and trained by HFC Bank Limited after it lost an injunction application in the High Court to restrict the Company from developing an over 500 acre of land perpetrated the act in the full glare of the public.

The story about how yet-to-be-apprehended land guards openly invaded the company two times in two months which made front pages of many newspapers recently and the Tema Police reluctance to apprehend them is yet a mystery.

Many advocates and the police institution believe that it is high time that land guards drawing the blood of innocent citizens and preventing rightful owners of land to develop those lands be apprehended and deal with according to the laws of the country.

But strangely, the Tema Police command led by top officers are happily dinning and winning with such criminals almost sheepishly and allowing their criminal activities to cause destructions to valuable properties.

According to our sources who witnessed the violent act said the Land Guards invaded the company premises on motorbikes and unregistered 4 X4 vehicles numbering over 20 persons welding different types of guns including 3 AK47 and started causing harm to the some workers of the company on duty without any provocation.

‘’The incident attracted the Police patrols of the Tema Patrol team that was Patrolling the area but to the surprise of onlookers and panicked residents, the patrol team upon seeing the armed criminals fled the scene creating more space for the criminals to continue mending out their brutalities to innocent people’’, an eye witnessed told this paper in condition of anonymity.

When this paper contacted the Chief Executive Officer of Setho Classic Engineering Company Limited, Mr Seth Kwame Sallah on the criminal issue, he said management of the company were still in shock as to why the land guards could engage in violence over an issue which has been dealt with by the court and is still pending before an Accra high court.

‘’the incident has left residents of the area living in fear because they do not know the next the step the land guards will take after they are deserted by their employers’’, he said

He continued that the same attacked was launched on his workers few months ago and immediately the land guards were arrested and sent to the police station, a representative of HFC bank limited went and secured police bail for them and offered them an undisclosed amount of money.

According to him it has been the usual attitude of the land guards to often attack residents by beating them to the extent that they even issue death threats.

Although he said some of them have been identified and reported to the Tema Regional Police, they are still free men and plying their bloody trade, without looking over their shoulders as they clutch their firearms.

“I am calling on the police to clamp down these because b they have made buying land in the nation’s capital and its environs akin to denying one sleep and courting death.

Land guarding is now an industry fetching so much money for those engaged in it. They build their bodies and acquire firearms from the underworld ready for the business of death. That is how they (mostly youth) get engaged in the nasty ungodly business”, the young CEO lamented.

He noted that Land administration especially the land commission in the country needs a total overhaul with the chiefs as custodians of this natural resource playing a crucial role.