Private Sector to partner Lands Commission to enhance Land administration in Ghana

Land administration services in the country are expected to be fully digitized and automated from next year to improve the waiting period for land title and land deed registrations among others. This is expected to be done through the involvement of the private sector as partners with the Lands Commission to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the services delivered to the public.

This was made known by the Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, James Dadson, when the Parliamentary Select Committee on Lands and Forestry, paid a working visit to the Commission and made a tour of some of its divisional offices as part of its oversight role over the activities of the Executive.

According to the Executive Secretary, the Commission is currently in the process of finalizing contractual issues for the engagement with the private sector in its activities and once that is completed by the end of the year, full scale implementation of the digitization process will kick in.

“We are hoping that by the end of this year, we would have fully cleared all the contractual issues with the engagement of the private sector. Because they are bringing on board both technical and financial support. And once we go through this legal and technical processes, we will commence full scale beginning next year,” he said.

Currently, the Lands Commission still operates mostly in a manual environment. As part of Phase II of the Land Administration Project, the Ghana Enterprise Land Information System (GELIS), was developed as a foundation for a complete automation of land service delivery nationwide.

Mr. Dadson said, serving as a pilot for the complete digitization programme, 10% of data in the Greater Accra Region, which is the most active land market in the country, has so far been scanned and digitized. He explained that the Commission was putting some finishing touches to the expansion of its Greater Accra Regional Office and the completion of the Commission’s Head Office Building to create the needed environment and space for the digitization.

“We are going through the processes for completion of our buildings; both Greater Accra and national. And once we have finished with that, we would go full scale digitization and ensure that as part of the Private, Public Partnership that we are embarking upon, the whole country will be mapped and so every land transaction; every land registration across the country would be done in a digital environment,” he observed.

At the end of the working visit of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Lands and Forestry, its Chairman, Francis Manu-Adabor, expressed satisfaction about the work done by the leadership of the Commission so far in both pushing for the completion of their buildings and also pursuing their digitization programme.

He was happy about the fact that they will soon stop the manual conveyance to electronic conveyancing as recommended in the new Land Act.

“We see that they are almost ready to go into conveyance that will be electronic. This is just to give people the confidence. Because you meet people outside and they are not too happy with the registration process. The way it keeps long and secondly, the falsification of documents. Now, with the implementation of the new Land Act, punishment will be meted out to those who do the wrong things to destroy the name of the Commission,” he indicated.

The Ranking Member, Dr. Rashid Pelpuo, on his part, said they were looking forward to seeing the Commission operate digitally to avert cases of fraudulent land acquisitions among others.

“The present situation where a lot of fraud is done by workers and clients is a serious concern. People forge signatures of others to register lands, and it becomes a problem and the Law Courts is flooded with all these cases of fraudulent land acquisition cases. So, we are looking forward to seeing them operate digitally to the point that it will be easy to track these fraudulent activities,” he also observed.

Source: Clement Akoloh||parliamentnews360.com