Accra, July 13, GNA-Mr Benito Owusu-Bio, a Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, has reiterated the Ministry’s resolve to protect State lands and demolish unauthorized structures on them.
The Deputy Minister said the Ministry would ensure that the development on State lands conformed to local plan schemes prepared by the respective Assemblies in collaboration with the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUPSA).
Mr Owusu-Bio said this when he paid a working visit to Mpehuasem, a suburb of Accra, to familiarise himself with the extent of encroachment on State lands.
In recent times, there have been disturbances over demolition of structures on State lands at Mpehuasem in East Legon, resulting in violent clashes between the Police and some students at Ideal College.
The Deputy Minister in an interaction with the media said: “State lands must not be left for people to develop and turn them into slums.
“We should not sit down for people to just encroach on government-owned lands and take them as their private properties, that should never be the case”.
Mr Owusu-Bio observed that most of the development at the Mpehuasem site had been done without proper development schemes despite many notices to developers to stop erecting structures on them.
He asked owners of those structures to get them regularized at the Lands Commission, noting that those that could not be regularized would be rejected to help save State lands for future use.
He stated that the Ministry and the Lands Commission were collaborating with the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council to sanitise and ensure proper administration of public lands.
“The Lands Ministry and other stakeholders will continue this action of demolition and sanitisation without any strive, not only in Mpehuasem but in the likes of CSIR, Frafraha, Sakumano, Ramsar Site, Diary Farms at Amrahia among others,” Mr Owusu-Bio stated.
He advised those who needed lands for development to visit the Lands Commission for a search and register legitimate lands to avoid future demolition.
Mr James Dadson, the Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, on his part, said the Commission had received approval from the Ayawaso West Assembly to begin a local plan scheme to ensure a proper development of the enclave.
“It will be good if those who have finished and furnished structures to visit the Commission to have them regularized, because when we start rolling out this scheme, even if you have a finished structure and it is on waterways or along areas designated for roads, it will be pulled down,” Mr Dadson said.
GNA