MINISTRY HOLDS LAND BILL CONSULTATION

Barbara Serwah Asamoah, addressing the participants

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Thursday, June 16, 2016

The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources has held a stakeholder consultation workshop on the draft land bill for the southern zone of the country in Accra under the phase two of the Land Administration Project (LAP-2).

The Land Bill, when passed into law, is expected to provide requisite framework for a sustainable land administration and management to ensure effective land tenure and efficient surveying in the country.

The high-profile meeting was attended by experts in land administration, as well as chiefs and queen mothers.

Nii Osah Mills, the sector minister whose speech was read on his behalf by his deputy Barbara Serwah Asamoah, said Ghana needed a robust, consolidated and up-to-date legal framework but added that it must take into account modern methods of surveying, land administration and conveyance.

She said in addition to the consolidation of existing land laws, the Land Bill is seeking to introduce new provisions which require what she called ‘critical interrogation’ such as gender empowerment as well as getting both stool/skin and allodial clan/family lands under the same regime.

The minister indicated that the draft bill will empower the Land Registrar to decline to register any deposition in land where the interest is more than 10 acres unless the Lands Commission in accordance with Article 36 (8) and 267 (3) of the constitution granted consent.

Where a holder of an interest in land in a registration district has not put in an application for registration after the expiration of a period within which an application should be made, the Registrar shall record the holder as Ghana, she said.

The minister disclosed that the bill is seeking to introduce penalties for both public and private officials and people in the land sector to ensure sanity in the land sector.

Prof. Bruce K. Baneong-Yakubo, Chief Director of the ministry, who chaired the meeting, said due to what he called ‘extreme indiscipline and lack of prudence’ the LAP has been initiated to bring prudent management of land for sustainable development.

“We took checkered steps to consolidate land administration and we are putting things in place.”

He, however, said the process to ensure effective land administration has been slow since the neighbouring countries had surpassed Ghana in that direction.

“Ghana was the first country that the World Bank support in land administration but other neighbouring countries which came in later are now ahead of us, he added.