|
Goverment Urged To Promulgate National Land Use Policy |
| The Rector of the Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Prof. Stephen Adei, has advocated the promulgation of a national land use policy to empower the government to acquire land from traditional owners to put it to more productive use. |
That, he said, was crucial because only 15 per cent of the land in the country was being utilised while the remaining 85 per cent was left unattended to.
He indicated that the government would compensate the affected landowners and pay them rent for the use of the land.
Prof. Adei, who made the call at the opening of a two-week strategic management training programme for the management staff of the Lands Commission in Accra yesterday, said unless there was a clear-cut policy regarding land use, our development would be slow.
The programme seeks to equip the participants with management and leadership skills, provide information on the Lands Commission's strategic plan, and promote knowledge, skills and attitudes in the preparation of strategic plans with the aim of improving the performance of the commission.
Prof. Adei observed that a journey throughout the country showed evidence of small farmlands with "several kilometres of land not being used".
He said many landowners complained of poverty whereas they had large tracts of land, which he described as the second most essential resource of the nation, which could yield them money when utilised.
He said if land was not used the nation lost a great deal, but if the land was used profitably, the owners would benefit from it and the nation would also be richer.
The rector, therefore, said the proposed national land use policy could provide the legal backing for the government to "compulsorily acquire land and put it to good use within a legal framework, and the owners will get rent".
"We cannot sit down to let the second most important asset of the country to go waste while people are in poverty," he stressed.
He mentioned the ownership of pieces of land by small families and the lack of a national policy on land use as some of the factors leading to the 'waste' of land in the country.
Prof. Adei asked politicians to gather the political will to acquire such land from the traditional owners, and discard the fear of becoming unpopular.
He noted that the most important strategic development was developing the human resource, adding that they were the biggest assets the land commission should focus on.
The Chairman of the Lands Commission, Mr Eustace N.A. Kumi-Bruce, noted that the public sector was increasingly required to perform as efficiently as the private sector despite the multitude of constraints that confronted the public sector.
He said although several efforts had been made for the past 20 years to reform the public sector's operations through programmes such as the Civil Service Performance Improvement Project (CSPIP), the National Institutional Reform Project (NRIP) and the Public Sector Reform Programme (PSRP), the impact of such programmes on the Lands Commission had been very minimal.
According to Mr Kumi-Bruce, the Lands Commission had inaugurated the New Charter Committees in seven regions and was left with the three northern regions to be covered before the end of September, 2008 to meet its challenges. |
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
