Musa Tarawally lectures on Land Biometric System

At a symposium on the training of Journalists on Tuesday 15^th April, the Minister of Lands, Country Planning and the Environment, Hon. Musa Tarawally, spoke on strategies eradicating Land grabbing and squatting in the country.

Giving his keynote address at the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) office at Campbell Street in Freetown, the Minister appealed to journalists to join him in the fight against land grabbing and squatting in the country, and to support him development policies, laws and systems that will sanitize land use, management and transaction challenges.

He said his ministry intends to establish land biometric registration that will certify ownership and transactions, consequently making the country’s land a collateral and financial instrument for economic activities.

Through the partnership of the ministry and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Ministry has developed a new land policy that will direct the development of much more shortened version, which nonetheless has been popularized by NGOs to make it nationally accepted.

“As a nation,” he said, “our baseline for national development is inescapably our natural resources.  I have thought it fit to include it in my performance contract, the geo-spatial survey to know and develop data on what we have on land.  The development of a data on our natural resources is noticeably the most solid foundation for society’s economic planning, of course, no doubt will certainly signpost the way for the confirmation of our water sources in the enablement of hydro-electric and irrigation systems, land for industrial farming, forest reserves for forest industries and tourist sites, our fish and mineral reserves respectively,” said Tarawally.

The Minister respectfully stressed that such will provide information for national development planning, planning of concession areas to avoid conflict with communities, better town planning, and the expansion of facilities for community livelihood activities vis-à-vis farming.

He appealed to the participants of the training workshop to critically analyze his vision for the country’s lands system, where possible make meaningful contributions that will dig out solutions to the deep-seated problems affecting the development of a nation such as Sierra Leone.

The conference also brought together journalists from individual media institutions (print and electronics) to possibly look into issues of country’s land systems, where necessary create a platform for public education as well as proving specialized training for media practitioners in the reportage of land issues.

Green Scenery, who evidently are the organizers of such a training, in collaboration with SLAJ, has it Executive Director Joseph Rahall, entreats the Lands Minister, journalists and other stakeholders joined them in the struggle to check and put right errors in the area of land acquisition, which he said has caused untold conflicts in communities in Freetown and from among Sierra Leoneans citizens.

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