In order to attract investors to the Ashanti Region, the Asanteman Council is to establish land banks to make land acquisition easier. Towards that end, a committee has been set up to oversee their establishment. The Asantehene, Otumfuo II, who announced this at Kumasi on Monday, said the move was tailored at supporting the government’s “Golden Age of Business” agenda.

The Asantehene was speaking during a courtesy call on him at the Manhyia Palace by Prof. Kasim Kasanga, Minister of Lands and Forestry. Expressing utter dissatisfaction with varied land issues, the Asantehene noted that public officials in the land sector had taken undue advantage of the existing incoherent land policies to pursue their personal interests.

“The land sector has, for a long time, been plagued with too much vested interests and fraud. Let’s endeavor to work with the truth, for if we are able to do that, all the problems relating to lands administration will be over,” he stated.

Other chiefs present at the brief shared the sentiments of the Asantehene and went further to criticize the granting of leases and timber felling permits by the Lands Commission and Forestry Commission respectively, without the consent of the appropriate traditional rulers.

Prof Kasanga, responding, announced that the government would soon introduce a new land policy that would remove the current bottlenecks inherent in the administration of public and stool lands in the country.

He noted that the administration of public and stool lands had been beset with a myriad of problems and the forestry sector had also plunged into confusion especially, with the activities of illegal chainsaw operators.

Prof Kasanga said the new land policy would help to fashion out the distinct but collaborative roles of the various sectors in the land industry the government and traditional rulers in land administration.

The Minister observed that the success of the new land policy would depend largely on the support and contribution of chiefs. In the true spirit of the new positive change, he said, chiefs have a positive role to play in the formulation and implementation of the new land policy.

“As chiefs, you have a positive role to play. If you don’t have a role to play, it means the government had already lost the opportunity of injecting sanity into land administration in this country,” Prof. Kasanga stated.

Calling for a renewed partnership between the government and chiefs in land administration, the Minister remarked that, “if you champion the cause, we will succeed but if you play a passive role, we will get nowhere.”