ENSURE ORDERLY ACCESS TO LAND...Otumfuo urges National House of Chiefs (SPREAD)

THE Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has called on the National House of Chiefs to ensure orderly access to land and its rational use to help attain the objectives of the national development plan.
In a speech read on his behalf by the Mamponghene, Daasebre Osei Bonsu II, at a consensus building forum on the national long-term development plan in Kumasi, Otumfuo said access to land should manifest in areas, including modernised agriculture, forestry, housing, industry and waste disposal.
“It is only your institution which can determine the type of sustainable arrangements that will best suit the purposes of the goal of the national development plan towards middle income status,” Otumfuo said.
The forum, which was organised by the National House of Chiefs in conjunction with the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), was aimed at collating ideas on achieving the long term goals of the national development plan.
Otumfuo Osei Tutu expressed concern about the fragmentation of land acquisition procedures and said it was important that some sanity was built in the system.
He said in working towards this objective, efforts should be made to synchronise the procedures with existing political arrangements.
The Asantehene, in that vein, commended the NDPC for its recent initiative in obtaining, by consensus, the commitment of the leadership of all political parties to sustain and promote the elements and broad strategies, which the plan sought to promote.
He noted that the active participation of Nananom in the formulation of the development plan and the commitment to its goals and objectives should strengthen traditional leadership role in mobilising the broad spectrum of the citizenry and refocusing awareness on the need to sustain the initiative, especially at the community level.
He indicated that development plans formulated by countries which had successfully adopted the culture of planning for socio-economic transformation revealed that the plans were driven by attitudinal and behavioural changes drawn from their indigenous and positive cultural values.
“Lessons from successful models of middle-income status need to be emulated,” the Asantehene said.
The chairman of the NDPC, Mr J.H. Mensah, stated that Ghana was not destined to be a third world country.
“As a nation, we have overcome most of our economic difficulties and we can get to the middle-income status, if we work hard,” he said.
Mr Mensah said the support of chiefs was needed to the fullest, if the objectives of the development plan were to be achieved.
He called for unity in the nation because without that all efforts to champion the cause of development would be a nullity.
The president of the National House of Chiefs, Odeneho Gyapong Ababio, said Nananom were ever ready to play their roles in moving the nation’s development forward.