Mr. Benito Owusu-Bio, a Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, issued a warning to individuals and organisations on Tuesday who are developing illegally on state-owned property for their personal benefit.
To avoid potential future destruction for encroachment, the Deputy Minister recommended anybody or any organisation interested in developing a plot of land to first perform a search at the Lands Commission to determine the "actual owner of the property" before placing any structures there.
Mr. Owusu-Bio encouraged the people to keep off a 60-acre State land at Mpehuasem and other Government lands around Ghana during a press conference in Accra to address Mpehuasem land concerns, saying the Lands Ministry and the Lands Commission were committed to ensuring sanity in the land sector. He emphasised, "This impunity of occupation of State lands must end.
Recent riots in Mpehuasem in East Legon of the Greater Accra Region over government-owned land parcels led to violent altercations between the police and some Ideal College students.
The proprietor of Ideal College, Dr. Joseph Kobina Essibu, was subsequently charged by the Property Commission of intruding on State-acquired lands in the Mpehuasem enclave.
The Pantang Hospital, the CSIR Animal Research Institute, the Ramsar Site at Tema, the Diary Farms at Amrahia, the Site for Accra Training College at Mpehuasem, and other State lands are all under the protection of the Ministry, according to Mr. Owusu-Bio.
"It should be noted that encroachment on state lands is discouraged and is a crime under Section 236 of the Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036).
The Lands Commission is carrying out its constitutional duties to reclaim the encroached State properties as the managers of public/state lands under Section 258 of the 1992 Constitution "As indicated, the Deputy Minister.
While this was going on, Mr. James E. Dadson, the Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, delivered a brief history of the Mpehuasem land issues and described the steps that various governments had done to make up for the lands' previous owners.
He said that by an Executive Instrument (E.I. 72) from 1974, the Government forcibly seized about 225.18 acres in Labadi for the Accra Training College (now Mpehuasem).
This comes after the government and the pre-acquisition owners, the Djirase Family of La and the Numoo Nmashie Family of Teshie, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in December 2008.
In lieu of payment, the government kept 111.125 acres and returned 114.055 acres to the proprietors. So, Mr. Dadson continued, Executive Instrument (E.I.) 72 has been repealed by Executive Instrument (E.I.) 16 of 2009.
He said that the Accra Training College walled off and occupied around 50 acres of the 111.125 acres the government had kept as a result. But as time went on, he claimed, some unidentified people turned to selling and developing a portion of the retained property beyond the College's boundaries.
"To determine the amount of development in the area, the Lands Commission used drone scans, and the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA) was enlisted to create a local plan for the region.
"This was to assure orderly development of the region for favourable habitation for academic work for both the Accra College of Education and the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA)," Mr. Dadson said.
According to him, the study showed that the enclave was growing and that squatters had covered a bigger portion of it with illegal temporary walls and wooden buildings.
According to the local plan, the roughly 60-acre government area outside of Accra Training College is planned for mixed development, with 30% of the site set aside for access creation. According to Mr. Dadson, the Ayawaso West Municipal Assembly's Spatial Planning Committee adopted the local plan on June 22, 2021.
According to Mr. Dadson, the Commission hired Messers Aynok Holdings Limited under the direction of the Lands Ministry to aid in the recovery of all encroached lands and to provide site protection to prevent encroachments for the execution of the local plan.
"Since 2010, the Commission has issued several warnings to those responsible for these encroachments, including Ideal College, the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA) dormitory, and a number of churches. The most recent being a press release on April 16, 2022, and a public notice of destruction put in the neighbourhood that same month, "Added he.
According to Mr. Dadson, the Commission was reclaiming the lands in accordance with Section 236 of the Land Act, 2020 (Act 1036).