The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources is tasking the Lands Commission to get rid of middlemen popularly known as “goro boys” from their operations.
This directive comes in response to a 2021 study conducted by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which cited the Lands Commission as one of the most corrupt institutions in Ghana.
Addressing the issue during an Editor’s Forum that discussed the commission’s recent ranking, the Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Benito Owusu Bio stated that measures are underway to sanitize the commission.
“We are asking the Lands Commission to get rid of those goro boys and the goro people in the system. These goro people cannot work in isolation, they can only work with the connivance and assistance of personnel within the system of Lands Commission.”
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ has taken the bold initiative to get rid of the recalcitrant and the bad nuts within their system. Likewise, we at the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources are also going to follow their example to ensure that we also rid the system,” he stated.
Meanwhile, the Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, Surveyor James Dadson says it has begun among other efforts to digitise its system to phase out corruption in its system.
“This is a major challenge on our hands. It is an exception for a document that passes through the hands of a goro boy to go ahead of the document that goes through the system. Some of them even take the money and they vanish. The document will be lying there, we will be looking for the person to go for an inspection and nobody shows up. Especially the people abroad, somebody comes to Ghana after two years, shows up at the Lands Commission, and then we find out that indeed these are the steps that if we are able to reach you, you will be cleared.”
“We have identified that once we embark on this technological drive, we will reduce the human interface even our own staff will have very little to do with the general office, everything will be done in the back office,” he said.
