The Deputy Minister of Lands, Forestry and Mines, Mr Andrew Adjei-Yeboah, has inaugurated a 26-member reconstituted Brong-Ahafo regional Lands Commission in Sunyani. The commission, under the chairmanship of Mr Frederick Obeng, Managing Director of Bunswap limited is made up of representatives from the Ghana Bar Association, the various municipal and district assemblies, Ghana Association of Farmers and the regional lands commission. Mr Adjei-Yeboah said government appreciated the problems and challenges in the land sector that were hampering the country's socio-economic development. He said it was against this background that government and its partners had come out with the Land Administration Project (LAP) to address bottlenecks in the sector with the objective of attaining efficiency and effectiveness. Mr Adjei-Yeboah said the project would also develop a sustainable and well functioning land administration system that was fair, transparent, cost effective and decentralized to enhance land tenure security. He stated that the Lands Commission was presently undergoing an institutional and legal reform under the LAP and its mandate would be enlarged to take on board the survey department, land valuation board and land title registry. The rationale, he said, was to ensure that land sector agencies operated under the land commission on a one-stop-shop concept to ensure efficient service delivery. The Deputy Minister said a total of 7,122 land cases were pending in the courts nationwide, adding that 2,820 cases out of 2,887 representing 97.68 per cent were heard and disposed of last year. Mr. Adjei-Yeboah said private sector consultants had been recruited to undertake pilot inventory of state acquired occupied lands in ten districts in the Eastern, Ashanti and Brong-Ahafo regions. He said the Lands Commission was expanding the existing buildings for the Sunyani office at an estimated cost of 2.2 billion cedis while the commission contributed a total of 23,533,871,602 cedis to the consolidated fund in 2006. Mr. Adjei-Yeboah urged the new commissioners to work towards sustaining and increasing the revenue generation capacity of the commission. Nana Abraham Kwadwo Kwakye, Deputy regional Minister, expressed the hope that through the land administration project, the sector would be streamlined. Source: GNA