‘Criminalise sale of unapproved lands’

A fellow of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors, Mr Meister Afriyie, has suggested the promulgation of a law to criminalise the sale of unapproved lands by the Lands Commission.

He said making such unapproved sale of lands a criminal offence would deter individuals who sold lands to two or more people resulting in land litigations.

Mr Afriyie, who also works with the Volta River Authority (VRA), was a participant in a workshop that discussed a National Spatial Development Framework.

National Spatial Development Framework involves the methods used by the public sector to influence the distribution of people and activities in spaces of various scales. For instance, the kind of amenities in a particular district or region could influence the number of people who migrate there.

With a National Spatial Development Framework for the country, developers and government as a whole can project into the future in terms of providing infrastructure and other social amenities.

Mr Afriyie told the Ghana News Agency that criminalising the illegitimate sale of land would enable government to have lands demarcated and used for specific purposes.

“We need lands demarcated for transmission lines, railway lines and other national projects to be available before investors come,” he said and explained that sometimes projects were stalled because lands that had been demarcated for specific purposes had been used to build houses.

Mr Afriyie also called for co-ordination between sectors and departments that deal directly with development.

Source: GNA