Alban Bagbin is the Minister of Water Resources Works and Housing in Ghana.
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Friday October 21, 2011.
Reports reaching Daily Guide indicate that the government is planning to re-assign some top officers at the Lands Commission to facilitate the acquisition of titles to state lands for NDC functionaries.
They see the top officers as people who are blocking their attempts to grab state lands.
Daily Guide learnt that so far some of the officers have insisted that the acquisition of state lands by individuals ‘is no go area’ and this has infuriated the authorities who are bent on causing their re-assignment or removal if possible.
To facilitate their diabolic agenda, they have intentionally accused the officers as being NPP moles in order to get rid of them to pave way for the land grabbing.
Sources say the land grabbing plans has heightened because most NDC functionaries are not sure the Mills/Mahama led government would win the 2012 general elections and therefore they want to ‘secure’ themselves with some property including lands.
Recently, a board member of the Lands Commission was said to have ordered some officers from a crucial meeting for refusing to okay documents of an NDC guru who was trying to a acquire state land.
Apparently the board member was said to have asked one of the officers to sign state land title document for an NDC guru and when the officer refused insisting it was not right, the ‘big’ man decided not to involve those officers seen as NPP moles in any decision-making process at the commission.
A number of state lands in priced areas have allocated to the private developers foreigners with close connection with the ruling government through the Ministry of Water Resources, Works and Housing. Some of the choice areas are Cantonments at the back of Police Headquarters and Roman Ridge which the NDC in opposition had kicked against their allocation.
When reached via telephone and SMS text, Dr. Wordsworth Odame Larbi, Chief Executive Officer of Lands Commission said there was nothing wrong with state lands being given to individuals.
“As I said the Lands Commission has certain functions to perform and it includes allocation of lands for development.”
“Those issues are issues that I am not ready to talk about”.
Dr. Odame-Larbi said he would not comment on whether or not there is allocation of lands to NDC functionaries and was also not ready to confirm or deny whether there was going to be a shake-up at the Lands Commission.
“I do not know your source of information so I can’t say whether it is the case or not”, he said.
The issue of state lands being taken over by private people particularly politicians has created a lot of controversy in recent years.
When in opposition, the NDC demonized then President J.A. Kufuor and his NPP administration for allocating state lands to individuals.
In the course of the pre and post 2008 election campaign the NDC in collaboration with Kwesi Pratts’ Committee of Joint Action (CJA) incited ethnic groups notably the Ga Dangbe whose lands had mostly been taken by previous governments, against the NPP administration.
When NDC took over office the National Security Coordinator Lt. Col. Gbevlo-Lartey told Radio Gold that some NPP government functionaries had taken over state property including lands and the government was going to retrieve them and deal with the culprits.
The government subsequently set up what it called “A three-member Technical Committee to probe the Re-development of Government Residential Properties in Accra during the NPP administration” but nothing has been heard about it after the committee submitted it report.
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