Mr. Benito Owusu Bio, Deputy Minister for Lands and Resources, has urged the National House of Chiefs and stakeholders in the lands sector to help in the implementation of the new lands Acts.
This move, he said, would help to resolve the inconsistencies that had bedeviled the existing laws.
Speaking at a stakeholders engagement with the National House of Chiefs and Lands Commission, the Deputy Minister stated that stakeholders in the lands sector had been calling for a critical look at the new laws governing land management in Ghana to bring about several problems in land administration such as the proliferation of land guards, multiple sales of lands, and tenure insecurity, amongst others to resolve.
According to him, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo assented to the Land Act 1036 Act 2020 on December 23, 2020, which, he said, was a milestone in Ghana’s land administration regime.
He noted that the Lands Act was aimed at revising, harmonising and consolidating the laws on land to ensure sustainable land administration and management, effective and efficient land tenure, and to provide for related matters.
He announced that the Act also sought to address some of the most pressing issues in land administration in Ghana, and stressed that the Act could not work in isolation, but required the concerted efforts of all stakeholders for effective implementation of the provisions of the Act to enable we enjoyed from the numerous benefits that it presented.
Minister Bio disclosed that one way of ensuring this was to organise sensitisation workshops for stakeholders to embrace the Act, while highlighting the major solutions that it presented for the numerous challenges facing the land sector.
The Minister indicated that the Lands Commission, under the supervision of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, had held numerous stakeholders sensitisation workshops on the Land Act.
He noted that Nananom (chiefs), as custodians of about 80% of Ghana’s lands, the traditional authorities were undoubtedly the biggest and most important stakeholders in the efficient implementation of the Land Act, hence, the engagement of the National House of Chiefs on the provisions of the Act.
Mr. Bio reiterated that many more provisions had been made in Act 1036 to enhance the efficiency of customary land administration, through the registration of the establishment of the Customary Lands Secretariat for the traditional authorities.
The Minister entreated the members of the House to embrace the provisions of the Act to help bring sanity to the lands sector, and requested the House to deliberate on the Act and propose inputs to the Ministry for consideration in drafting the Legislative Instrument (LI) for the Act.
