Ejisu (Ash), Oct. 29, GNA - As part of the government's efforts to reduce land disputes in the country, the Office of the Customary Land Administration (CLA) Unit of Ghana has started an enumeration exercise to document all the customary lands in the country.

Mr Mark Kakraba Ampeh, National Facilitator of the Project at the Customary Lands Administration Unit, attributed the high rate of land litigation and disputes, which sometimes led to the death of many people to lack of accurate information on customary lands in the country. He was speaking at the opening of a two-day workshop for 38 enumerators and Supervisors, who are to collate data on all customary lands at Ejisu, Besease and Onwe all in the Ejisu Traditional Area of the Ejisu Juaben Municipality.

He explained that the enumeration exercise was to clarify ownership and land use rights to minimize land-related disputes and conflicts, to promote peaceful development of local communities and also to promote economic development within the communities. He said the data that would be collected during the enumeration exercise and would be processed into a database and kept at the local Customary Lands Secretariat at Ejisu to provide adequate land information to land developers and investors.

Mr Ampeh, advised the enumerators not to do anything to intimidate the people they were going to deal with in order to elicit the right information they needed for the exercise.

He on the other hand, appealed to the Traditional Leaders in the area to cooperate with enumerators to have adequate and accurate information on their lands to enable the CLA to create appropriate database for Customary Lands in the area. He commended the Department for International Development (DFID) of the United Kingdom for sponsoring the Project. 29 Oct. 08