Land Owners treating construction works at University of Health and Allied Sciences

University of Health and Allied Sciences. Ho

The landowners at the site earmarked for the University of Health and Allied Sciences in the Volta Region have threatened to stop Chinese contractors working on the project through legal means if government failed to effectively compensate them, since the land is a major source of livelihood.

According to the landowners, they bought parcels of land from three families, namely Kokoroko, Sunu and Dzegbedzi families, who were consulted by government. They indicated that government was fully aware that the land for the University project belong to individuals and that the individual landowners were asked to present documents on the land for the necessary steps for compensation.

Briefing the media in Volta Regional capital, Ho, by the aggrieved landowners, an Educationist, Mrs. Vida Dzobo said the individual landowners were currently frustrated hence the decision to defend and protect their property acquired over the years just to ensure that government offer appropriate compensation to the owners of the 703 acres of land for the university project at Sokode.

Mrs. Dzobo explained that after the landowners had gone through the exercise of submission of document on their lands, the individual landowners were asked to go back to the land for re-surveying in order to ascertain that their documents sent to the original landowners for authentication conformed to the land size that they claimed to posses for which government was to pay compensation.

She said the individual landowners were aided by a consulting firm, WISDAF Company Limited, and painstakingly submitted the documents to the firm to be submitted to the government.

But sadly the WISDAF Company Limited informed the land owners later that the Land Valuation officials could not prepare any documents for the landowners to be paid compensation because there was no Legislative Instrument passed for the purchase of the land by government.

Mrs. Dzobo further explained that WISDAF Company informed individual landowners that the Volta Regional Coordinating Council (VRCC) was written to for dialogue with government on the need to pass the Legislative Instrument for the landowners to get monies in respect to their lands.

She continued that the Consultant informed them (landowners) that the VRCC had created a desk, especially to coordinate activities pertaining to the development of infrastructure and had ordered all the individual landowners to remove crops, including economic trees on the said land, within a short time, in order to pave way for the construction of road through the site.

Mrs. Dzobo stressed that the Land Valuation Department was tasked to count all economic trees on the individual land holdings and trees in wood lots that had been intentionally planted including palm trees were counted and as the individual land owners were coping with the VRCC, a bulldozer suddenly appeared and razed down everything on the section of land earmarked for the road, thereby throwing the owners into panic.

She said the individual land owners looked on helplessly as the bulldozer razed through the land, destroying their livelihood, saying "some of the land owners have tilled the land for decades and had used it as their main source of revenue with which they had fed their families, pay their wards' school fees and provide other forms of financial support to them", the distressed widow stressed.

According to her, the action of the government would bring untold hardship on the vulnerable land owners noting that the landowners received another shock recently when a Chinese Construction firm arrived to start infrastructural work on the land for the University without recourse to the owners of the land wondering if that was the way private property was acquired from citizens by government.

Mrs. Dzobo made it clear that the individual landowners were not against the establishment of the state university in the region, but rather was worried about the way and manner government was forcibly going about the acquisition of individual lands for the project, adding that government's activities was a clear violation of the individual rights of the land owners.

When Contacted, the Head of the Consulting firm supporting the individual landowners, WISDAF Company Limited, Mr. Wisdom Kwaku Deafeamekpor confirmed the story and said government's action could be deliberate and calculated to deprive the individual landowners of appropriate compensation.

Mr. Deafeamekpor explained that his outfit on behalf of the landowners tried to ensure that compensation was paid to people who rightly owned the land for the university project but nothing had been done to ensure that the land owners were duly paid even though the necessary documents were made available and wondered what was preventing government from living up to its responsibility.

The Public Relations Officer of the VRCC, Mr. Gator, however, intimated that the creation of the desk to deal with the issues concerning the land was a clear sign that government was prepared to ensure lawful acquisition of the land from the individuals but was unable to state why work at the site had started without appropriate compensation to individual owners of the land.