Report by: Ishmael Barfi
According to the Acting Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, Mr. James Kobins Dadson, measures are been put in place to ensure effective management of the Commission across the country
These measures he said are needed at the Lands Commission to serve the people of Ghana efficiently as well as fulfil it’s Constitutional mandate.
Some of the measures he stated includes the decentralization and digitalization of its operations, infrastructure Development, staff capacity building, adaptation of best practices in the sector.
“All these is to position the Lands Commission to provide excellence and effective customer service to the people of Ghana”, he acknowledged.
The Executive Secretary was speaking at the closing ceremony of a five-dst management retreat organized by the Lands Commission in Accra on Friday, March 18, 2022.
Digitalization of Records is our Priority-Lands Commission
The five-dst management retreat was under the theme: “ Achieving Institutional Excellence land service delivery through modern technology, human resource development and private participation”.
The outcome of these reforms Mr. Dadson believed would ensure a total transformation of land service delivery at the various offices of the Commission across the country.
He therefore revealed that, the Commission is embarking on digitalization of land documentation describing it as one of key in reforming the sector.
“We are looking at total reforms of our sector and digitalization is key and is one of the elements that we are embarking on, for we have operated in a typically manual environment, therefore we are working to migrate our records from manual to digital”, he stressed.
Touching on some reforms undertaken by the Land Commission, he said, one can register his/her land in the same region adding that, by the next twelve (12) months, the Commission’s district office in Tema in the Greater Accra Region would be fully operational.
He was quick to say that, the chiefs and the traditional authorities manage over 80 percent of all the lands in the country but added that, “we are only doing the registration on their behalf”.
To ensure effectiveness, he said the Commission occasionally embarks on public education campaigns, as well as house of these chiefs.
He further indicated that, “now that we have a new land Act, we have started having sessions with the various Houses of Chiefs, engagement of other stakeholders such as media practitioners”.
Every region he explained has a Commission and the board has a representative of the Regional House of Chiefs who reports and send feedback to their respective chiefs.
With regards to the allegations in the public domain that, Lands Commission is the cause of the numerous land disputes, Mr. James Kobina Dadson refuted it, adding that, the Commission cannot be blamed for the wrong doing of some of the Traditional Council and their chiefs in the region.
In support of the Acting Executive Secretary said, the Deputy Executive Secretary, Mr. Jones Ofori Boadu on his part attributed the current lands disputes to the country’s outdated map which has been in use since 1974.
“It is part of the problem we are facing in managing our lands in Ghana, if we don’t have up to date record of all maps, , this is some of the challenges and these translate to the incurrent of some of the records”, he emphasized.
Therefore he said there is the need for a comprehensive reforms at the Commission stressing that, the Land sector is the bedrock of the country socio-economic development.
Source: www.thenewindependentonline.com
