Inhabitants of Odupong Kpehe educated on land conflicts

Odupong Kpehe (CR), Nov. 4, GNA - Land for Life, a lands right advocacy non-governmental organization, in collaboration with the Lands Administrative Project, has organized a durbar for the people of Odupong Kpehe in the Central Region on the need to be abreast with laws governing acquisition of land.

The durbar was under the theme: "Forms of Rights and Interests in Land Acquisition and their Registration/Documentation Procedures."

Addressing the participants, Mr Donu Nartey, Chief Executive Officer of Land for Life, blamed many land cases, which had resulted in court actions, on lack of adequate information pertaining to their acquisition.

"Sometime a person may have a good case concerning a piece of land but ignorance on basic land rules can just make him lose it," he said. Mr Nartey, who is also a former Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, asked opinion leaders in the area to find out about the causes of land problems in the community and address them adequately in order to avoid cheating, bitterness and mayhem.

He pledged his organization's readiness to liaise between the community and government in resolving conflicts concerning land acquisition in the area.

Mr Nartey called on landowners in the community to regularly pay their ground and property rates for the implementation of development projects in the area.

Mr Yaw Opoku, a lawyer, appealed to prospective land buyers to always endeavour to properly understand indentures that came with lands they intended to buy.

"One's inability to understand an indenture can result in a lot of misunderstanding which can result in cheating or court actions," he cautioned.

Mr Opoku also asked landowners to always go by agreements pertaining to the acquisition of their lands in order to avoid court actions by aggrieved persons.

He congratulated Land for Life for embarking on such sensitization programmes since they could help minimize the rate at which people consulted lawyers on land issues. In an open forum, the participants expressed their displeasure about government's acquisition of some lands in the area for irrigation and multiple sale of land by landowners and called for more education on the payment of property and ground rates.

They also called for the resolution of the boundary conflict between Gomoa East in the Central Region and Ga South in the Greater Accra Region.