Parliament directs Lands Minister to submit records of public lands
The Government Assurance Committee of Parliament has directed the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel A. Jinapor, to make available the records of all the public lands from 1993 to date before the end of the 8th Parliament.
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The committee said that would help address the issues of government lands being registered as private lands, as well as the alleged fraudulent activities happening at the Lands Commission.
“The only way to forestall this is to put the data together. I believe there are elements at the Lands Commission who don’t want Ghanaians to have this data, so that they will continue with these illegal practices where public lands will be sold as private lands, the Chairman of the committee, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, stated.
The committee gave the directive when Mr Jinapor appeared before it yesterday to answer some questions. The directive came as a result of the minister’s failure to furnish the committee with the data on all the public lands, citing the lack of capacity of the Lands Commission to put together such data within a short time frame.
The committee was of the opinion that the lack of commitment by the Lands Commission to compile such data in good time was a deliberate action to allow for all the irregularities within the country’s land system to continue.
“The Parks and Gardens lands in Wa, for example, the Lands Commission had conducted itself in a manner that has allowed a private individual to build a fuel station on the land and there are a lot of this instances all over the place,” Mr Ablakwa said.
He, therefore, asked the minister to submit the report by the end of the Eighth Parliament no matter how inconclusive it was.
Assurance
The minister gave an assurance that he would endeavour to put together all resources at the ministry and the Lands Commission to provide the report within the given time frame.
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Mr Jinapor said the Lands Commission was a decentralised state institution which was scattered across the country. He said in each office was a compiled data of all the land records within their jurisdiction.
So, in order to get details of all the public lands, the Lands Minister said it must be collated from all the various offices across the country, which was very difficult because the commission operated manually.
“So it's not because of the lack of transparency; it's just because the work requires time and effort, but it is being done and I want to assure the committee that I will make the records available before the end of this 8th Parliament,” Mr Jinapor said.