The Greater Accra Regional Security Council is set to demolish all unlawfully erected structures in the core zone of the Sakumo Ramsar Site on Wednesday, October 19, 2022. This comes after a series of announcements by the government for persons erecting buildings on the site to desist from the act to help preserve the ecological state of the Ramsar Site. The Chairman of the Greater Accra Regional Security Council, Henry Quartey made the pronouncement after a stakeholder engagement ahead of the demolition exercise. “We are going there to ensure that buildings that are sited in the core areas of Ramsar in the water are removed.” “The law mandates the assembly to do so. I have given them enough time to relocate. But unfortunately, anytime we speak, we see people disregard our warnings and continue to set up structures on the Ramsar sites.”
Henry Quartey
A Deputy Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Benito Owusu Bio also added that about 80 percent of residents outside the core zone of the Ramsar site will be offered the opportunity to regularise their documents after the exercise.
Rate of encroachment is alarming
The manager at the Sakumono Ramsar site, Thomas Acquah says the rate of encroachment is alarming. “Currently, as we are speaking the core area has been encroached upon. The buffer area is also fully encroached as for the transition area is already full. As the whole place goes, it will get to a point where the whole area will be declared as not feasible to be used as a Ramsar site and that will go against the whole nation,” he told JoyNews in July this year. According to the Technical Advisor of the Chief Executive of the Forestry Commission, David Kpelle, previous attempts to halt the further encroachment of the protected lands was interfered with. “I have led a demolition team to this place. The Assemblyman, the Presiding Member, the chiefs and land guards came to stop us. Security people came with us and they brought a court injunction. We went to court to put an injunction on the building and the Judge refused us and rather put an injunction on Forestry Commission,” he said. Originally spanning over 3,500 acres, the Sakumono Ramsar site is one of five in Ghana. It serves as holding bays for thousands of gallons of rainwater from the adjoining communities. David Kpelle says it will cost nearly 350 million dollars to restore the Ramsar site. According to a 2019 report by the Center for Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Services (CERGIS), if care is not taken, the Ramsar site may soon exist no more.