Lands Commission makes headway in digitisation of manual land records
The Lands Commission has completed digitisation of its manual land records of four land districts in the Greater Accra Region.
The exercise, which was done in collaboration with the Office of the Vice President, aimed at fast-tracking land title registration, searches, site plan preparation and other essential documents by the public.
The pilot digitalisation process started in 2019 in parts of Accra and would be expanded across the country.
The beneficiary land districts are the 01 District, 02 District, 03 District and 019 District.
The 01 District comprises areas from the 37 Military Hospital, Lapaz, Kwashieman to the Mallam enclave.
The 02 District covers Afienya, Dowenya and Prampram.
The Accra Central, Cantonments, Labone, Osu and Lartebiokorshie make the 03 District, while the 019 District covers Spintex, Tema Motorway, East Legon and portions of the Tema Metropolis.
Mr Jones Ofori-Boadu, the Deputy Executive Secretary in charge of Corporate Services of the Lands Commission, told the Ghana News Agency in an interview that the digitisation exercise was funded with the Commission’s Internally Generated Funds.
He said the Information Technology (IT) staff developed the software known as the Ghana Enterprise Land Information System (GELIS), which aided the conversion of manual data into electronic format.
Mr Ofori-Boadu said: “The digitalisation process will reduce the turnaround time for land title registration from 30 days to about seven days and clients could sit in the comfort of their homes and log onto the electronic portal.
The address is; (https//onlineservices.Ic.gov.gh/lcportal/), pay the required fees through mobile money, visa and through the banks as well as the ghana.gov payment platform.
He said the Commission had developed robust security features on its electronic portal to prevent hacking by fraudsters and other criminal elements.
Meanwhile, the GNA gathered that the Commission’s online portal occasionally experienced bad network challenges and affected processing of land documents, but efforts are being made by the IT to improve it.
Mr Ofori-Boadu said although the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down services and revenue streams from January to May last year, the revenues picked up from June to December after COVID-19 safety measures were put in place at the workplace.
Source: GNA