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Report By Bernard K DADZIE
The Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, His Lordship Justice Anin Yeboah, has pointed out that the Supreme Court is ready to assign some of the licensed surveyors to our courts so that they can assist the judges to understand the plans or maps before hearing and in some cases conduct an independent survey for contesting parties.
“In these days of your modern types of equipment like drones and LiDAR, we are sure adjudication processes would be more convenient, fast, and easy to interpret with graphics.Licensed surveyors can help create a digitized land litigated database that would connect judgement from different courts on the same piece of land,” he noted.
According to Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana, His Lordship Justice Anin Yeboah such an information system would prevent duplication of efforts and ease of understanding the issues surrounding same land under contention for several years.
He further said that the new Land Act 2020 is another important step at harmonizing the existing laws governing land registration and explicit role of licensed surveyors.
“I also call on Licensed Surveyors to also take the renewal of their licenses each year seriously since failure to do so have implication on the plans you sign. I wish you a fruitful deliberation and a wonderful time in your AGM. God bless us all,” he said.
The Chief Justice was speaking at 4th Seminar and Annual General Meeting of the Licensed Surveyors Association of Ghana (LiSAG). It was held at AH Hotel, East Legon. The Chief Justice also called on LiSAG to deepen their collaboration with the judiciary.
“I know you have begun some engagements and I urge you to design capacity building workshops to train judges on the rudiments of your practice and the changing phase you so espouse. The changing phase also means a new way of working with the judiciary to ensure sanity in land registration since the cadastral plan is one of the foremost documents to be relied on for the transactions,” Justice Anin Yeboah stated.
According to him, there a lot of arm chair licensed surveyors or better still road side ones who only sign plans for paltry amounts without recourse to the repercussions of their actions. He stated that the courts have seen so many bad and ill prepared cadastral plans to say the least. Though some of these plans are forged, a good number of it was done without circumspection and professionalism it requires from the licensed surveyors.
Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana indicated in his speech read by Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie, a Supreme Court Judge that the sanctions regime on the misconduct of license surveyors are replete in the laws and the courts shall not shirk to exact punishment as much as our land sector is bedeviled with avoidable cases and the licensed surveyor cannot be excused
His Lordship Justice Anin Yeboah charged LiSAG to have an Ethics and Disciplinary Committee that would peer review the work of colleague LS and bring to book the ones not following the standards of practice. Punitive internal measures can be exacted on members not conforming to standards.
“It is a shame to sometimes realize many of our land issues are due to spatial measurements and wrong interpretation by different surveyors picking same land. We have recently jailed a lot of the quack surveyors marauding around and causing problems as qualified surveyors,” he stated.
He added, “We shall continue to do our part to ensure we weed out these “goro boys. However, my dear friends, who signs these plans for the so-called boys? Their network and linkages are unbelievable as such you may have to design a sophisticated regime of instrumentation and identification that breaks their chain of conniving with key actors to have land registered.”
The 4th Seminar and Annual General Meeting of Licensed Surveyors Association of Ghana (LiSAG) was held under the theme “The Changing Phase of Cadastral Surveying for Effective Land Management”.
The AGM was attended by Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie the Supreme Court Judge representing His Lordship Justice Anin Yeboah, the Cheif Justice of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Ing. Nana Ato Arthur, Head of Local Government Service, and Mr. Francis Manu Adabor, the chairman of Parliamentary Select Committee on Lands and Forestry and others.
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