CHECK UNAUTHORISED STRUCTURES ...Tema Traditional Council urges TDC (PAGE 47)

The Tema Traditional Council has appealed to the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) to educate developers in the area to acquire legal documents to avoid unauthorised development practices for Tema to retain its image of well-planned city.
The council has also called on the management of TDC to sanction its task force, which has allegedly connived with desperate and innocent developers to flout building regulations.
It claimed that the TDC Task Force, which has the statutory obligation to check unauthorised siting of structures and illegal allocation of land, was not functioning as expected and was directly or indirectly involved in the creation of the mess and therefore lacked the courage to confront it.
Members of the council said they were not happy because they were mostly blamed for land allocations, alleging that land guards were making it dangerous for landowners in some areas to enter their own land.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic in Tema on issues bordering on unauthorised allocation of land and estate development in the Tema Traditional area, the Spokesman of the Council Nii Anum Keteke, the Chief of Klangon, said Tema had its stool lands spreading through Klangon to Adjei Kojo among others with those areas becoming new settlements.
He said they were all part of the government’s acquisition areas but in 1994 the TDC released Klangon lands to the Stool while portions of the Adjei Kojo land were released in 1998.
Nii Keteke said it was pathetic to find green belts being developed into structures without approval while places earmarked for roads and wildlife were all being developed.
He stated that the Stool wanted to see a disciplined land allocation and therefore were not happy that unauthorised development was springing up in those new settlements.
Nii Keteke criticised the TDC Task Force for being involved in some alleged corrupt practices and conniving with some developers to enter the Tema Stool land without authority.
He explained that as a result of some of these corrupt practices, Ashaiman had also become a slum and therefore the stool would want to defend the new settlement to ensure that is was well planned.
Nii Keteke said the chiefs and people of the affected areas had plans to protest to the sector minister if the TDC management did not take action against the Task Force personnel.
The chiefs commended the newly created Ashaiman Municipal Assembly for its proposed plans to pull down unauthorised structures to make way for roads and culverts. They said the lawlessness in development must be controlled now else new settlements would also become slums in the very near future.
Nii Keteke said their concentration was on Klangon and Adjei-Kojo because they were the new ones coming up and they would need to be protected.
He also appealed to the security agencies to check the activities of land guards and their agents who had taken entrenched positions and created problems all over the new developing sites.
He said because monies had changed hands to allow people to build on unauthorised lands, it was difficult for town planners to do the right things and called for immediate action to stop new developments to avoid a situation where developed houses would have to be pulled down in future.
Officials of the Tema Development Corporation who were contacted for comments declined to talk to the Daily Graphic.
Meanwhile the Tema Municipal Assembly has expressed concern about the springing up of unauthorised structures in the metropolis.
The Public Relations Officer, Mr Frank Asante, said the Assembly would soon start a demolishing exercise to clear all unauthorised structures from the metropolis.