SEMINAR ON CUSTOMARY LANDS IN KUMASI (PAGE 29)

STORY: George Ernest Asare, Kumasi

A five-day training workshop designed to build the capacity of the staff of Customary Land Secretariat (CLS) to enhance their operations has taken place in Kumasi.
The workshop was the first of its kind in a series of capacity-building programmes for the CLS to equip its staff to effectively and efficiently perform their functions.
It also sought to enhance record-keeping, interpretation of plans, dispute resolution as well as registration procedures.
It further sought to sensitise the staff to the importance of the ongoing land administration reforms under the Land Administration Project (LAP), legal land rights and interest associated with them, general staff management, land use planning, as well as the determination of rent, premium and conveyancing.
The CLSs are located at Tabiase in the Upper West Region; Sandema in Upper East, Tamale in the North and Dormaa in the Brong Ahafo regions. The rest are at the Asantehene’s Secretariat in Kumasi, Kyebi in the Eastern Region, Wasa Amenfi in the Western, Odupong Kpehe in the Central as well as the Gbawe Kwatei Family in the Greater Accra regions.
Addressing the participants, the Deputy Minister for Lands, Forestry and Mines, Mr Andrews Adjei Yeboah, said the workshop, which formed part of the LAP being pursued by the government aimed at re-engineering land administration at all levels and was, therefore, designed to train staff of the CLS in the 10 regions across the country.
He said the project also intended to “create a fair, efficient and transparent system of land service delivery in the country”.
Explaining, Mr Yeboah said “Customary Land Secretariats are the interface between the traditional land ownership systems and the public land administration system, and it is the aim of the government to harmonise the two systems”.
The secretariats, he pointed out, “have been established as part of the government’s efforts to address the myriad challenges facing the land sector such as poor record-keeping, indeterminate boundaries, multiple sales of land and protracted land litigation, among others, which combine to create a lot of problems in the country”.
Such problems, he said, do not only “divert enormous resources away from development projects, but also increase transaction costs for doing business in Ghana and sometimes scare away investors”.
He said in dealing with the challenges facing the land sector, the government also recognised the fact that most lands in Ghana are held by customary authorities “and that no intervention in the land sector can be effective without the understanding, direct participation and support of the land owners”.
Mr Yeboah, therefore, urged the participants to focus on the workshop in order to build their skills in a way that would enable them to keep and maintain “up-to-date records of all land transactions on behalf of customary land owners in the country”.
He said as customary land administrators, an opportunity had been created for them to set standards worthy of emulation and, therefore, urged them to use the skills acquired “to deal with complex and technical issues of land administration in your respective communities”.
He said it was also important for them to use their skills to manage the land tenure system effectively and also “spawn investor confidence in the land industry in Ghana”.