The Ministry of Lands and Nat­ural Resources with support from the National Security, is to embark on a demolition exercise to retrieve large parcels of land in Accra belonging to the Ghana Atomic Ener­gy Commission (GAEC) from encroachers. After an inspection tour of some construction sites on the 2,002-acre land at Kwabenya, the sec­tor Minister, Alhaji Collins Dauda, ordered the illegal developers to stop their activities and vacate the place immediately. The Deputy Director-General of the GAEC, Professor Yaw Serfor-Armah, had earlier told the minister that between 40 and 50 per cent of the land which was acquired during the First Repub­lic for the establishment of a nuclear energy cen­tre had been encroached on by the private developers. The minister said the position of the govern­ment on lands that had been acquired for devel­opment projects was very clear and it would not relent in enforcing the law against unlawful occupants of those land. "All developers on the GAEC lands must desist from developing their structures because we will not wait for them to complete them before we demolish them" he said. The minister was accompanied on the inspec­tion by the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Henry Ford Kamel; the Public Relations Officer of the ministry, Mr Charles Wereko; Prof. Serfor-Armah; the Head of workers of GAEC, Mr David Boyetey, and some members of the security agencies. Alhaji Dauda said the demolition exercise, to be undertaken by the ministry in collaboration with the GAEC and the security agencies, would be a sustained one to rid the place of unlawful occupants. He said currently there were a lot of claimants to the GAEC land due to media reports in 2008 that the gov­ernment was handing over portions of the land to its original owners. He stated that "the government has not taken a deci­sion on what percentage of land it will hand over to the supposed landowners". "We need to determine who the rightful owners of the land are before any release is made," he said. The minister noted that as far as the ministry was concerned, no land had been released yet and it was not going to hesitate in pulling down any structures erected on any part of the land. "There will be no compensation for victims of such demolition exercises and they will be liable to prosecu­tion, where necessary," he added. He urged the security agencies to help protect the GAEC land from further encroachment. Prof Serfor-Annah said encroachment had been a major problem facing the organisation and noted that the GAEC land was not lying fallow, as a segment of the public thought. He said even the open places were serving an impor­tant purpose as far as nuclear energy and radiological activities were concerned. "We must protect the land from further encroach­ment," he pointed out. Source: Daily Graphic