Members of BA RHC in attentive position
A WORKSHOP to educate traditional rulers in the Brong Ahafo Region on the need to codify customary laws on land use and practices at the Dormaa Traditional Area has ended at Sunyani.
The workshop organized by Ascertainment & Codification of Customary Law Project (ACLP) at the instance of the National House of Chiefs was to validate a research data collected on Dormaa Traditional Stool Land towards codification of its customary and family land use laws and practices.
Speaking to the chiefs at the Brong Ahafo Regional House chiefs on the relevance of the project, technical coordinator of the project, Thomas Tagoe said land transactions in Ghana are faced with conflicts between customary practices, rules and norms on one hand and formal and statutory laws on the other thus the need to codify and formalize customary land use laws and practices for easy transactions in the country.
Customary lands, according to him, include lands owned by stools, skins, clans and families among others. “These lands formed significant percentage all lands in the country,” he stressed. He said codification and later use of such lands will be applicable to particular communities or traditional areas.
Mr. Tagoe said the final output of the project will make land use laws certain and help in the settlement of disputes to bring more transparency into land transactions which would promote faster development. According to him paramount chiefs, divisional chiefs, female traditional rulers, indigenous and settler farmers including married women and men, people with disability were all interviewed for the project.
The ACLP, he said is a joint research project established by the National House of Chiefs and the Law Reform Commission and supported by phase two of the Land Administration Project (LAP-2) under the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources.
This, he said, is in fulfillment of a constitutional mandate on the national house of chiefs backed by the Chieftaincy Act, Act 759, 2008 to undertake a progressive study, interpretation, and codification of customary laws on land use.
Vice president of BA Regional House of Chiefs and Omanhene of Dwenem Traditional Area, Nana Bofo Bene has thanked the officials of the project. He asked his colleagues to support the project in its entirety to help reduce land litigation in the region.
FROM Daniel Y Dayee, Sunyani