Ablakwa bemoans Land Commission’s delay in making list of gov’t lands public

The Government Assurances Committee of Parliament has said efforts to get data on public lands and their corresponding usage over the years have proved futile.

The Committee says it had demanded the documents in order to ascertain which of the State lands have been used for fraudulent activities, including the registration of government lands as private properties.

At the Committee’s sitting Wednesday, July 31, 2024, its Chairman, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa noted that the Lands Commission has not been cooperative in its effort to seeking what State lands have been used for.

“If this data is put together and provided, it will help all of us. These instances of government lands being registered as private lands and the fraud that is going on at the Lands Commission, as exposed by the Soul Enquirer, the only way to stem this, to prevent this, to forestall this, is to have the data, to put the data together.

“That is why I am clear in my mind that there are elements at the Lands Commission who don’t want the Ghanaian people to have this data,” he indicated.

Meanwhile, Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Samuel Abdulai Jinapor, explained why the Lands Commission has delayed in releasing the data to the Committee.

“The Lands Commission for all these years has been operating manually and it is just recently that we have started making efforts to digitise the records of the Lands Commission.

“The information I have from the Commission since I gave them the instructions to compile this list is that compiling the list from the 16 regions of the Lands Commission across the country from 1993 to now is an extraordinary undertaking and therefore they have not been able to put it all together as yet. And so I am unable to provide it now, but there is work in progress,” he explained.

Source:onuaonline.com