The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources was on Wednesday blamed by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament for awarding contracts to unregistered and defaulting companies to the tune of GH¢53,356 without recourse to Section 22(l) of the Public Procurement Act, 2003 that frowns upon giving government contracts to unqualified persons and companies. Contracts amounting to GH¢25,196.91 were awarded to the companies that were not registered with the Registrar General’s Department and GH¢28, 159.48 to companies that had failed to file their annual returns with the Registrar-General. These were some of the queries the members of the committee confronted the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Henry Ford Kamel, who led a technical team and heads of the agencies under the ministry to respond to queries raised by the Auditor-General on the Public Accounts of the ministry for the year 2009. The committee blamed the ministry for not adhering strictly to section 22(1) of the Procurement Act which requires every procurement entity to obtain appropriate and sufficient documentation to ascertain whether the prospective bidders possessed the technical qualifications and competences, had the legal capacity to enter the contract and had fulfilled their obligations in terms of payment of taxes and social security contributions among others. The accounts officer of the ministry, J. Agorzoh, said he referred the query to the procurement entity at the ministry for response but that did not solicit any convincing response. When asked about the status of the Audit Report Implementation Committee, responsible for implementing recommendations from the Auditor-General’s Report, Mr Kamel acknowledged that the committee had not been functional and that plans were far advance to make it active. Officials of the Lands Commission, an agency under the ministry, also came under heavy criticism for not taking measures to reclaim unpaid rent by lessees amounting to GH¢3,3 million, owed to the state, contrary to the Operational Manual of the Commission which states in paragraph 5.4 (a)(ii) .... , “If rent is unpaid on the due date by a lessee, the final demand note shall be served the lessee, warning of the consequences if the rent continues to be unpaid. The warning shall include imposition of interest, re-entry and court action.” A review of the sample registers of the Rent Management Unit of the commission by the auditors revealed that in spite of several publications in the media reminding rent defaulters to honour their obligations, most of them had persistently defaulted in settling their indebtedness to the commission. The huge outstanding debt, according to the recommendations of the Auditor-General, could deprive the government of the needed funds for development and, therefore, urged the commission to institute court action against recalcitrant defaulters. In response to the management query, the commission replied that the secretariat was saddled with more than 400 cases and with limited number of solicitors, additional recruitment of legal staff would be required to facilitate any court action against the defaulters. Additionally, the commission was blamed for not reviewing ground rent of lessees at plush residential areas in Accra over the past 50 years resulting in the state being denied large sums of money for development. The affected areas are, East Legon Residential Area 9D,9A9C,Zoti Residential Area at Lartebiokorshe, Airport West 7B Residential Area, Ring Road Industrial Area, East Legon Ambassadorial, South Legon, North West Ridge and North Ridge. The Member of Parliament for Atwima Nwabiagya and a member of the committee, Benito Owusu-Bio, was worried why the commission periodically reviewed the ground rent of lessees of other areas like Nima, but not doing same to the plush areas. Next to take its turn was the Ministry of Information.