A land use expert with Department of Soil Science at the University of Cape Coast Engr. Ebenezer Ankomah Gyamera has stated that the full decentralization of Lands Commissions and land services at the district level as proposed by the NPP government in their manifesto is a good and welcoming initiative.
According to him, decentralization will help address most of the challenges associated with land registration and cadastral surveys in the country.
“I am for the decentralization of land administration because it is going to help the nation a lot in encouraging more people to register their documents and by so doing all legal and digital information of properties can be recorded through cadastral and GPS address systems”, he said.
Dr. Gyamera also revealed that problems associated with the current land registration system go beyond lack of information on properties to include health and family issues.
According to him, “people are dying through hypertensions caused by land conflicts because if you do not have security of tenure over your properties you live in fear everyday as you do not know what is going to happen next”.
“Land conflict is also breaking families because people assume that some relatives have failed to secure their lands when in actual fact it is the fault of the system”, he added.
Moreover, Dr. Gyamera also believes that licensing more land surveyors is another way to go in addressing land disputes in the country.
“We have only 160 surveyors serving the whole population which is not the best; the country should license more land surveyors so that land administration can be smooth and the country can move forward”, he concluded.
Above all, Dr. Gyamera has called on Ghanaians to be vigilant in their dealings with people in the process of buying or securing lands to help minimize the number of land conflicts we deal with in the country.