That unscrupulous individuals and state land looters who are ready to sacrifice the good of the public for their parochial interest have taken their greed an octave higher is no news.
What is new is that, free-range, they are busily encroaching the Lake Tesa spillway off the Monrovia Road area at East Legon, within the Ayawaso West Municipal Assembly, in Accra, derailing the beauty of the reserve and leaving it at the mercy of destruction.
Aside the lake itself now serving as a dumping site to residents under the cover of darkness; ostensibly to pave way for the residential purposes, a bridge is also being contructed on the drain to gain access to the land, something that would block the flow of water during the rains and cause flooding.
Worst still, New Crusading GUIDE’s roving scouts gathered that the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA) which is responsible for ensuring the sustainable development of land and human settlement has also not rezoned the area to open the floodgate for developers to be scrambling to put up buildings on the waterway.
“I have had the opportunity to visit the area and I was surprised with what I saw. It was just too terrible, as it would endanger the lives and property in the area in the future. Water flows in the drain that the bridge is being constructed on and, trust me, it is just appropriate for that to happen because someone wants to get hold of the reserved land,” one of the distraught residents told this paper.
The dirty agenda of the State land looters comes on the heels of the establishment of a 10-member Public Lands Protection Team to ensure the protection of lands owned by the state.
The team is clothed with the mandate to review the status of state-acquired lands to enable government to make informed decisions on these lands.
Strangely, the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources’ team has not reviewed the status of the Monrovia Road area reserved zone for any individual or group of people to possess it.
Bent on possessing the state-reserved land, the looters have engaged the services of armed land guards to ward off residents who are opposed to the loot.
It would be recalled that the Ministry of Works and Housing has vowed to deal with persons who will erect structures on water ways, as floods are disturbing the country.
Meanwhile, a hydrologist has described the developments at the Monrovia Road area reserved zone as extremely dangerous.
It would be recalled that the Lake Tesa was created to provide water for the construction of the Accra- Tema motorway in the first republic under Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Following the completion of the motorway, the Tesa Lake remained a beautiful resort and served as a recreational site for residents. Its spillway is what has prevented flooding in the plush East Legon.
In 2000, the water resources commission following similar complaints from residents of East Legon, set up the lake Tesa committee with representatives from the hydrological service, the environmental protection agency, lands commission, forestry commission, the then tourism board now authority, the Tema metropolitan assembly and the east Legon extension land owners yet their report continue to gather dust on the shelves.
