Cabinet has given approval to the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to review, on a case-by-case basis, all public lands acquired in the country.
“Processes for the acquisition of state lands that were not completed before I took office have been cancelled outright; we want to protect our public lands,” the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, has said.
Again, he said efforts were being made to digitise land records for effective administration while also decentralising service delivery to all parts of the country.
Mr Buah also said that the Office of the Administrator of Stool Lands and the Lands Commission were ramping up efforts to register all customary lands.
He further said that the ministry was making efforts to secure the country’s land boundaries through the Ghana Boundary Commission.
The minister was briefing the Vice-President, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, when she paid a working visit to the ministry in Accra yesterday.
Present at the meeting were the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Yusif Sulemana, and technocrats at the ministry; the Forestry Commission Chief Executive Officer, Dr Hugh C.A. Brown, and heads of other agencies under the ministry.
Mr Buah described the visit as very significant and would motivate the ministry and its agencies to work better.
Mining sector
In the mining sector, the minister said efforts were being made to “turn all brown water into blue” by cracking down on galamsey activities in water bodies.
Mr Buah said the setting up of NAIMOS had been a major measure and had yielded considerable results in the galamsey fight.
He also said that regulatory reforms, including review of the licensing regime in the small-scale mining sector, had sent positive signals that the government was committed to sanitising the mining sector.
The minister added that the revocation of L I 2462 was also a clear signal that no room would be left for mining activities in forest reserves.
He said 1800 earth-moving equipment had been registered, with many of them being tracked.
The minister said some 1,600 river guards had been recruited to monitor galamsey activities at riverine areas.
Collaboration
The Vice-President, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, urged agencies under the ministry to deepen collaboration to ensure effective management of the country’s natural resources.
She said the natural resource sector was crucial to the country’s sustainable development trajectory and, therefore, needed to be efficiently managed, adding that the government’s transformational agenda required all ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to gird their loins and align their activities for accelerated development of the nation.
Environmental protection
The Vice-President said that issues of sound management of the environment were at the heart of sustainable national development and must be pursued with utmost passion.
She said it was unacceptable that the country’s land, forest, and water resources were getting destroyed through unhealthy mining practices, adding, “protecting our environment is protecting ourselves, and all of us must be committed to working hard to protect those resources”.
Prof. Opoku-Agyeman further urged the minister to take steps to ensure that land was made available to women to actively engage in agriculture.
Source:
www.graphic.com.gh