We’ll deal with land guards – DCOP Eklu

The Central East Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) David Eklu, has stated the commitment of the police administration in dealing with perpetrators of land guard activities at Kasoa and its environs.

He, therefore, cautioned that anybody who seizes anything from a site or harasses developers will be arrested, saying, “We have arrested 10 suspects who seized tools belonging to developers and have charged them for stealing.”

He explained that Kasoa and its enclave had become a hub of land guard activities because of the high interest in land acquisition and development of property leading to the occurrence of multiple sale of land, trespassing, illegal collection of monies from developers among others.

DCOP Eklu stated these when he addressed the Central Regional Coordinating Council (RCC) ’s meeting at Cape Coast on Wednesday.

He explained that the measures put in place by the police had reduced issues of land guard activities, while indicating that the violence associated with it had also reduced.

DCOP Eklu further said that, there were still incidences of activities by people claiming to be Asafoatse within the various communities who went round the sites to collect monies from developers because they did not want to be referred to land guards.

“If you have any case of land, report to the police and we will conduct our investigations into the case. We will be establishing network with the regional lands officer to find out the actual owners of the land,” he said.

DCOP Eklu indicated that the police had started developing a database to track the trend of land cases and said, they had compiled over 2,972 cases from January to August.

Out of the number, he said, 202 had been sent to court and that some of the cases were being pursued at the civil court.

Others, he said, used alternative dispute resolution mechanism to settle the cases, saying, “If you sort yourselves out peacefully without violence then we are fine with it. Sometimes, we give them advice and they go back and do not come to report.

He mentioned that the region had a number of chieftaincy-related disputes as well as boundary disputes which had the potential of stalling development initiatives.

The police administration, he said, had also started deploying personnel to the various senior high schools across the country to curb all sorts of vandalism by the students as the students complete education.

The Central Regional Commander, DCOP Alexander Amenyo, for his part, indicated that, the region recorded a decline in crime rate, saying, “Criminal activities in the region is on a low side.”

He also called on the Central Regional House of Chiefs to address a number of chieftaincy disputes in the region as the disputes were affecting development in communities experiencing such cases.