I will reduce timeframe for getting land title - Abu Jinapor

The Minister designate for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abdulai Jinapor has pledged to reduce the number of days people use to get land titles in Ghana.

For him, effective implementation of the new Lands Acts, Act 1036, “will go a great way of improving the administration of lands in our country.”

He said although the Lands Act “is still a piece of legislation, we will require to make sure that we publicise it by getting the country to understand it,” in order to enable people to know the implications of the Act.

Answering a question on land title during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament Wednesday, Mr Jinapor said “we must have a strategy and a policy to ensure that this Act is well implemented.”

Background

Parliament last year passed the Land Bill, 2019 to reform land administration in Ghana.

The bill aims to revise and consolidate the laws on land, with the view to harmonising those laws to ensure sustainable land administration and management and effective land tenure.

It further seeks to consolidate the various legislation on land into one enactment to provide a comprehensive statement in respect of the consolidated legislation.

Mr Jinapor in his explanation regarding reducing the timeframe for the acquisition of land tile said, based on his own assessment of Act 1036, he is confident that the Act answers all the challenges people face in acquiring titles to their land.

“In my view, Mr Chairman, literary, all the funny difficult issues relating to land administration seems to have been….intervened” in the Act 1036.

He added that digitising the operations of the lands administration office as well as decentralising the operations and services of the Lands Commission will help to remove all bottlenecks people face in their quest to get titles to their lands in Ghana.

Mr Jinapor also promised to apply the law without fear or favour in his fight against illegal mining popularly known as ‘galamsey’.

Similarly, the nominee for the Lands and Natural Resources Ministerial position, also hinted that he will be more aggressive in tackling Ghana’s alarming loss of forest cover.

“We need to roll out an aggressive afforestation scheme; an afforestation scheme that will not look at tickling, that will not look at small interventions but which will ensure we aggressively roll out a programme of afforestation,” Mr Jinapor stated.