Greater Accra Regional Lands Officer at the Lands Commission says that fees charged by his outfit are approved by parliament and that no amount of money is charged for signing searches.

Timothy Anyidoho said this while dispelling allegations of extortion to facilitate the processing of land documents as he advised clients to report such incidents.

He added that transactions with third parties should be avoided as they frequently collect monies under the pretense of processing documents.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, he stated that the Client Service and Access Unit at the Lands Commission has been provided where documents can be submitted and official fees are also paid.

“Yesterday a man came to complain to me that there’s a man insisting that a search should be done for him. He said no, we do not do searches online. ‘Can you just go and pay online and get it done?’ but the man kept insisting. He is insisting but, if I took this money, he will call Joy FM tomorrow and say that we took money from him,” he said on November 28, 2023.

Mr. Ayindoho mentioned that the Lands Commission's Disciplinary Committee met with certain staff members following complaints about corrupt practices within their ranks and were brought before the committee for appropriate action.

“The Lands Commission has taken steps to deal with anybody who is known to be involved in any form of corruption. Our ministry takes these views very strongly as advised so we are taking steps to deal with them.”

He further revealed that a search takes up to 14 days for it to be ready. However, when there are delays, a new committee which has been launched called The Client Information, Complaints and Advisory Services serves as a platform for such complaints to be lodged.

“From October 25 to 27^th, we trained officers across board, country wide, where you can lodge a complaint on our online services or also call in or come to our offices to complain about our service. For instance, I submitted it in 14 days, I haven’t gotten a response. What do I do?”

“Then the commission can take that complain and respond in record time to that. It’s a public service agency and its learning from its experiences what to do better and with things like that we believe that we will be pushing the standards higher.”