The Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Benito Owusu Bio, has said that his outfit has ordered the Lands Commission to see to it that middlemen popularly known as ‘goro boys’ are eliminated from their operations.
Benito Owusu Bio indicated that the order is part of efforts the lands ministry is implementing to ensure that the system is well-sanitized from any corrupt practices.
The directive comes in reaction to the 2021 study conducted by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) which disclosed that the Lands Commission is one of the most corrupt institutions in Ghana.
The deputy minister reiterated that the ministry is fully committed to ensuring the system gets rid of recalcitrants while speaking at an Editor's Forum discussing the latest ranking by the UN.
“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 said according to citinewsroom.com
Surveyor James Dadson, the Executive Secretary of the Lands Commission, added that they are putting measures in place to ensure that their operations are digitalized to help combat corruption.
“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,” citinewsroom.com quoted him as having said.
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An old photo of goro boys