Lands Commission stifling efforts to make list of govt lands public – Ablakwa

The Government Assurances Committee of Parliament has strongly criticised the Lands Commission for failing to provide data on public lands and their corresponding utilisation over the years.

The Committee argues that the data is required to tackle fraudulent activities, which it says include the registration of government lands as private lands.

At its sitting on Wednesday, July 31, the chairman of the committee, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, said all efforts to get the documents from the Lands Commission for the past two years have proven futile.

“If this data is put together and provided, it will help all of us. These instances of government lands being registered as private lands and the fraud that is going on at the Lands Commission, as exposed by the Soul Enquirer, the only way to stem this, to prevent this, to forestall this, is to have the data, to put the data together.

“That is why I am clear in my mind that there are elements at the Lands Commission who don’t want the Ghanaian people to have this data.”

The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abdulai Jinapor, provided some justification for the delay in the release of the data by the Lands Commission.

“The Lands Commission for all these years has been operating manually and it is just recently that we have started making efforts to digitise the records of the Lands Commission.

“The information I have from the Commission since I gave them the instructions to compile this list is that compiling the list from the 16 regions of the Lands Commission across the country from 1993 to now is an extraordinary undertaking and therefore they have not been able to put it all together as yet. And so I am unable to provide it now, but there is work in progress.”