Ghanaian Times

The Times in a front page banner headline story, says encroachers are having a field day on the 2,929-acre land earmarked for a National Olympic Sports Complex at Nii Boi Town in Accra.

The paper says while a survey in 1992 showed that there were about 5,000 illegal buildings on the land, there are now over 20,000 buildings there.

According to the Times, indications are that it would not be long before the whole area would have been fully taken over by illegal developers.

The paper says this has come about because of the inaction by the Ministry of Youth and Sports to claim the land acquired by the government in 1975 for the Sports Complex.

The story quotes Mr Kofi Aggrey, Public Relations Manager of the Ministry of Youth and Sports as saying that when the Ministry discovered that people had encroached upon the land, it appealed to the government to determine what action to be taken.

The government, according to Mr Aggrey, then advised that the encroachers should be made to pay a compensation of about 2.5 million cedis each to the Ministry. He said initially the encroachers agreed to pay the compensation but later refused, claiming that they had bought the land from the chiefs.