Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By
William Yaw Owusu
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Even though Worawora was not part of communities
listed to be paid compensation in the Volta Basin Flooded Area, the Paramount
Chief of the area Nana Asare Baah III was able to collect GH¢428,240 from
government.
Nana Asare Baah III, Omanhene of Worawora and a
practicing barrister yesterday justified the payment at the Commission of
Enquiry investigating the payment of judgement debts.
He admitted being paid
GH¢429,530.00 (which appeared in the commission’s record as GH¢428,240.00) in
one tranche and said about 3,066 acres of Worawora lands were flooded when the
Akosombo Hydro Electric Dam was constructed in the 1960s.
Justification
He told
Sole-Commissioner Justice Yaw Apau that he had been a chief of Worawora for the
past 36 years and it was his predecessor who had initiated the claim for
compensation and he had to follow it up to its logical conclusion.
He said Worawora lands
came into the picture when the people of Pai included their lands in their pursuit
for compensation saying “we had to fight to get it back and my land was the
smallest among the claims.”
When the
Sole-Commissioner found out from him the reason why the initial claim was in
the name of the Worawora Stool instead of the individual families as admitted,
the witness said the first chief might have made a mistake.
Nana Asare Baah admitted
that the amount was paid into his personal account before it was forwarded to
the family heads but one third of the amount was retained by the Worawora Stool
for development.
“I have documents to
show how the money was paid into my account and later shared among the family
heads but I do not have documents on how it was distributed among them because
I was not in the country at that time.”
Tankreku
Nana Danagigy, a chief
of Tankreku which is part of Nchumuru but placed under the Krachi Traditional
Council told the commission that all their lands were submerged following the
dam construction.
He said the VRA settled
the people of Tankreku in Grubi and got very little communal lands for farming
but did not get crop compensation even though the commission’s counsel Dometi
Kofi Sorkpor insisted that the leaders of the town collected GH¢86,230.00 as
compensation in the 1975.
The witness admitted
that he collected GH¢159,321.04 for 3,743.31 acres of land destroyed by the
floods for the people of Tankreku and said it came in six tranches but the
records show the site plan was in his name.
GH¢138m
Cabinet in July 2008 approved a consolidated amount
of compensation totaling GH¢138million for various stools/families in Pai,
Apaaso, Makango, Ahmandi and Kete Krachi Traditional Areas and about 57 groups
were said to have benefited from the amount.
Records at the commission revealed that GH¢71million
has been paid so far to the various claimants and the disbursement of the
remaining GH¢67million has been put on hold to enable the government deal with
discrepancies in the payments.
Some of the witnesses appearing before the
Sole-Commissioner have been tendering in evidence site plans that did not have
dates embossed but had purportedly used the same documents to claim the amounts
from the Lands Commission.
Justice Apau even expressed shock at how the Lands
Commission could have proceeded to order the release of the various amounts to
the claimants based on the documents the witnesses are tendering before the
commission.
Furthermore, the Court of Appeal judge did not
understand why communities that were resettled by the government in the 1960s,
given communal lands and paid compensation for crops destroyed by the Volta
River floods could turn around to claim cash compensation almost 50 years down
the land.
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