Lands Commission gets new head office

A new eight-storey building, which will serve as the head office of the Lands Commission, has been inaugurated at a ceremony in Accra.

The new structure, which is located in the western airport enclave, has among others, a 300-seater auditorium, a board room, a driver’s lounge, a cafeteria and a baby care centre.

With this, the Lands Commission, with all its divisions and staff will be housed in one building to provide a conducive atmosphere for work.

The Vice-President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, who inaugurated the office yesterday, said the government had in the last eight years worked to build a robust land administration anchored on three pillars of modern office infrastructure, digitisation and automation of business processes and well-motivated and knowledgeable staff.

He said the completion of the new head office building, equipped with modern facilities, was geared towards the first pillar of a robust land administration.

“This modern facility is not just a new structure, it represents a significant step in our collective mission to build a more efficient, transparent and customer-centred land administration system in Ghana,” he stated.

Motivation

Recounting the motivation behind the building of a new head office, Dr Bawumia emphasised the need to streamline property valuation, property digitisation, the digitalisation of the records of the Commission, as well as the consolidation of searches after a visit to the office in 2018.

He said in today’s fast-evolving world, digital transformation was essential for enhancing service delivery, accountability and transparency and ,therefore, commended the Lands Commission for their efforts in that regard.

He said with the aid of digitalisation, the Lands Commission had been able to automate land title certificates which reduced the potential for errors that could arise from manual entries, thereby significantly enhancing accuracy and efficiency.

Effective land administration

The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel A. Jinapor, emphasised that an effective land administration was imperative to the economic advancement of every nation.

He said the quest to transform the national economy to bring about the much-needed development and prosperity could not be achieved if the country failed to anchor an effective land administration.

For that reason, Mr Jinapor said merging the various state agencies such as the Survey Department, the Land Valuation Board and the Land Title Registry, with the then Lands Commission, under the Lands Commission Act, 2008 (Act 767), was meant to harmonise the administration of land in the country.

Unfortunately, he said, due to the absence of a befitting office complex, those agencies, which had become divisions of the commission, continued to operate from separate offices, thereby posing a great challenge to the harmonisation of land administration.

Mr Jinapor added that the ministry had established six fully digitised offices for the six new regions of Ahafo, Bono East, North East, Oti, Savannah and Western North, which he said saved residents in the region, expenses and time involved in travelling long distances to access the services of the Lands Commission. 

Significant milestone

The Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, Benjamin Arthur, said the new structure marked a significant milestone in the commission's journey towards efficiency and excellence.

"For a very long time, the Lands Commission head office has shared the same facility with the Greater Accra Regional Lands Commission. Effective today, the tenancy agreement the head office has with the Greater Accra Region of the Lands Commission has expired and is not renewable," he said.