The Ebusuapanyin of Brempong Kwodwo Ebiradze Royal Family of Cape Coast in the Central Region, Nana Agyare Kotompo III has dragged the Regional Director of Medical Services and the Chief Executive Officer of Cape Coast Teaching Hospital to the Cape Coast High Court to seek an order of perpetual injunction restraining them, their agents, servants’ privies and all those claiming in trust for them from further encroachment on their lands.
According to the family, the defendants have caused publications to be made in the Ghanaian Times and Daily Graphic stating that the Royal family was committing trespassory acts, a publication which had severely embarrassed the royal family.
In their statement of claims, the plaintiff said in 1973, the government of Ghana administered by the then Supreme Military Council took over 153 acres of land at Abura belonging to the royal family for putting up a regional hospital without any instrument.
The statement indicated that in 1974, the government erected pillars to demarcate the area excluding the disputed lands before commencing the construction of bungalows for doctors and flats for nurses and paramedics till 1998 when actual works for the construction of the hospital was commissioned.
The plaintiff stated that the defendants have since occupied the said lands without compensating them and even intended to take over an additional 34 acres which was not part of the lands acquired by Executive Instrument No. 29 though resisted by the family.
The plaintiff said several efforts to prevent the Teaching Hospital from taking over the additional land proved futile.
He said it has lately come to his notice that defendants in their quest to forcibly take over the additional 34 acres had posted notices on walls of some houses sited on the land instructing the occupants to vacate the land within 21 days.
Meanwhile the affected residents and property owners on the disputed land had appealed to President Nana Akufo-Addo to prevail on the Teaching Hospital not to seize or destroy their properties until the case was determined by court.
In a petition signed by the property owners and copied to the regional minister, the leader of the group, Kwamena Duncan, stated that it would not be prudent for government to demolish houses put up by citizens and throw them onto the street.
He said they had used their hard earned incomes to put up houses to reduce the huge housing deficit facing the country hence need government intervention in the matter.
From Sarah Afful, Cape Coast