Land owners in the country seeking titles to their lands will soon be able to go through the registration processes smoothly and receive their titles within 30 days, the yet to be approved minister of Lands and Forestry, John Peter Amewu, has assured.
The minister-designate who was vetted Tuesday afternoon, expressed concerns over land administration problems in the country, assuring members of the Appointment Committee of Parliament he would work towards addressing the challenges if he’s approved.
“Land title registration takes about two years, sometimes. In accordance with our manifesto, the president said categorically that we should be able to reduce the long duration in land title registration,” he said.
Mr Amewu said he would work with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo towards cutting down on the duration, stating he would “make sure that the period for land title registration is brought down to a minimum; a minimum of 30 days. That’s what I’m going to work towards”.
State lands
Touching on state lands in the country, the nominee said if approved, he would conduct inventory of government lands to establish where they are which ones compensations have been paid for and those that compensations are yet to be paid for.
He said in instances where compensations have not been paid to the land owners, he would consider a system where the lands can be traded for infrastructural development and proceeds that accrue from it used to pay for the compensation.
“Where compensation of lands have not been paid, I will try to see where we can trade land for infrastructure development and make sure that the resources granted or generated from that can be used to pay compensation to land owners,” he said.
Depleted forest
Mr Amewu said of the country’s total land space of 238,000 kilometre-square , 11,000 kilometre square is covered by water bringing the net land space to about 227,000 kilometre-square of which 16 per cent constitute the country’s forest reserve.
“But as I speak, over 50 per cent of that proportion have been depleted. About 50 per cent of the 16,000 kilometres square have already been depleted so that is where we stand as a country.
The minister-designate observed the situation is so serious that it needs immediate attention, promising to put in place the necessary steps to reclaim the lost forest.
If given the nod by the Committe, he said, he would collaborate with the chiefs and opinion leaders and all stakeholders to make sure that those areas with intense depletion will do replanting to reverse the current degradation of the forest land.
By Stephen Kwabena Effah|3news.com|Ghana
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