DCE urges land owners to utilise Customary Land Secretariats
The District Chief Executive of Bongo in the Upper East Region, Mr. Clement Akugre, has advised land owners to register their property at the Customary Land Secretariats (CLS) to help curtail the numerous disputes associated with land ownership.
The DCE said this when a three–member team, Messrs George Nti, Franklin Opong-Obire and Richard Owusu Asare, from the Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, called on him to inform him about sensitization programmes of the Project in the District.
Mr. Akugre, who commended the CLS project, indicated that should they have been established a long time ago, some of the litigations on lands which sometimes resulted in deaths and injuries could have been prevented.
There were about 33,000 land cases pending in courts across the country, official sources have indicated.
The DCE said the Assembly had registered a lot of land litigation cases which were seriously interfering with its work and noted that with the establishment of CLS, which registers all land titles and their owners the problems would be resolved.
The team advised the DCE to ensure the proper documentation of all acquired lands of the assembly to avert any disputes in future.
They explained that under the project all land owners would be assisted by CLS to register their lands to ensure proper documentation.
They stated that traditional authorities would also be aided to document their respective land boundaries to avoid future conflicts among communities and added that the project would serve as a source of information for future generations to benefit from the legacy left behind by their parents.
Sensitizing the chiefs and people in some of the communities in the Bongo, Bolgatanga, Kassena-Nankana West and the Builsa areas at various durbars, the team urged the people to register their lands since that was the best way of protecting them from encroachers.
They said that under the project, multiple sales of lands would be a thing of the past and noted that the Ministry had so far established 38 CLS in the 10 regions.
They added that Land Management Committees have also been constituted in each of the areas where the secretariats operated with trained staff, empowered to handle and resolve petty issues in relation to land conflicts, using dispute resolution mechanisms which involve cultural mechanisms.
The Paramount Chief of Bongo, Naba Baba Salifu Aleemyaroom, entreated his subjects to ensure that all their lands were documented and warned those who sell their lands verbally to desist from the practice to forestall confrontation and litigation.
Source: GNA