Help secure donated lands against future compensation claims – chiefs told
Traditional rulers have been urged to help secure title deeds for community project lands to ward off future agitations by such community-disoriented royal family descendants who rise up later for compensation claims over such donated plots.
Mr Emmanuel Louis Agamah, South Tongu District Chief Executive (DCE), making the appeal said, the issues of royal family descendants rising up over lands donated for communal project, sometimes reselling and encroaching on them, leaves much to be desired and it must be curtailed through the appropriated means.
Mr Agamah was inaugurating a three-unit school block, with ancillary facilities for the Dzodome DA Basic School, built by the Assembly on a three-acre plot of land donated by Chiefs and Elders of Dzodome, a farming village in the area.
He was of the view chiefs, by their position as custodians of lands in trust for communities, were right in donating fractions of such lands on behalf of the community for projects inuring to the general interest, describing as unfortunate, the act of a group rising up later, discarding that general interest spirit.
He urged Chiefs to continue to offer lands for education and health facilities, saying absence of land often stalled targeted community projects and drawing development back.
The DCE commended Togbi Awafia Akoto Agloborni II, Chief of Dzodome and his Elders for the land, promising the Assembly will keep expanding facilities in the school to an enviable school in the area.
The DCE, who just commissioned a similar facility for Amedorme community, said the Assembly was at pace at eliminating major Basic School infrastructure challenges across the area to enhance enrolment and quality teaching and learning.
He urged all stakeholders, parents in particular, to lend their hands to the wheels to enhance education, reiterating it a key tool for personal, community and national development.
Mr Kobla Woyome, Member of Parliament for the area, commended the Assembly for completing the project and promised to continue partnering the Assembly to enhance quality teaching and learning in the area.
Miss Elorm Abah, Head teacher, said the School, started by the local Baptist Church in its premises in 1996 with 79 pupils, went through stages, including becoming Dzodome Community School, hence the donation of the current site by the chiefs and finally its adoption by the Ghana Education Service.
She listed current student population as 41, with three teachers, who have only one chair and a table at their disposal, and only two hexagonal tables and 22 chairs for the entire pupils.
She mentioned other challenges as inadequate text books and Teaching and Learning Materials and appealed for support.
Miss Abah also appealed to government to place the school on the School Feeding Programme to help activate enrolment and pupil retention as the pupils have to live on the single morning meal they took at home till school closes, a situation she said was hampering concentration of pupils.
Source: GNA