Workshop on land administration opens

Agona Swedru (C/R), Aug. 14, GNA - Professor Dominic Fobih, Minister of Lands and Forestry, on Thursday gave the assurance that Government would make all efforts to ensure the implementation of the Land Administration Project (LAP) being pursued to rid land service delivery of litigation and corrupt practices.

Opening a two-day workshop at Agona Swedru to design monitoring and evaluation mechanisms for the LAP, Prof. Fobih said land administration was not as hopeless as many people might perceive it to be. He noted that land administration has also continued to get a lot of bad publicity because of perceived roles of stakeholders in perpetrating the sector's inadequacies.

The Minister said the problem of access to land was one of the key constraints to local and foreign private investment.

Professor Fobih commended land administration experts for their dedication and selfless service to the nation, and said land administration agencies must be looked at from the national, regional and district levels.

The Minister reminded participants to bear in mind that the Project was for the ordinary people and charged them to come out with guidelines that reflected simple methods of how any negative impacts could be detected and corrected.

Professor Fobih exhorted heads of agencies to be vigilant for appropriate sanctions to be applied against those who would want to derail the LAP.

He called on stakeholders from the academia, customary landowners, civil society organisations and foreign development partners for effective collaboration to ensure the project's success.

He announced that Cabinet and Parliament had ratified a 20-million-dollar World Bank credit agreement for the project, which would be formally signed on Monday.

Other credits are expected from the Department for International Development of the UK; GTZ and KFW, both German technical co-operation agencies.

Mr Sampson Adjei, Acting Chief Director of the Ministry of Lands and Forestry, charged the participants to come out with an effective monitoring and evaluation document on the project.

The 50 participants were drawn from the universities, research institutions, as well as representatives of customary land holding authorities, public land agencies, development partners and non-governmental organisations.

The first phase of Land Administration Project, designed to bring sanity into land administration, spans five years, beginning in October. The components of the project are to ensure a harmonious policy and legislative framework for sustainable land administration, institutional reform and development, efficient titling system, registration, valuation and land information systems, project encompassing monitoring and evaluation as well as human resources development.