By Ruth Adjorlolo
A Former Lands and Natural Resources Minister, Mike Hammah, has disclosed that the policy of the late President Prof. John Evans Atta Mills was to preserve and protect Ghana’s forest reserves including the Achimota Forest.
Mr Hammah said the aim was to protect the forest reserves through the promotion of eco-tourism and biodiversity conservation.
Mr Hammah said he was therefore mandated to pursue the policy and implement it as the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources at the time.
Speaking to the Media, he said the policy he inherited from his predecessor was to protect flora and fauna and also preserve the Achimota forest.
Commenting on the decision by government to declassify the Achimota forest, the former Lands Minister said he was not in the position to tell whether the current Administration is following the Atta Mills policy or not.
According to him, he could not have told any Media house that the recent announced declassification by Government was good, especially as the Mills policy was against giving any forest reserve out for infrastructural development.
Earlier, he had told the Media that there was a major paradigm shift under the Mills Administration, moving away from the consumption value of the forest to non-consumption value through the promotion of ecotourism and biodiversity conservation.
He said the implementation of that policy would “have led to bringing in agencies responsible for the development and maintenance of forests for biodiversity conservation to ensure that people don’t go there to clear the place and start building all kinds of infrastructure.”
He said the agencies would have been protecting the flora and fauna of the country by also planting more trees and pruning dead ones to protect the forest reserves, subsequently making money through people going there for recreational purposes.
Mr. Hammah, former Member of Parliament for Effutu Constituency maintained that “it has never been part of the policy of Atta Mills to clear a portion of the Achimota Forest Reserve to put up apartments and malls.
On the petition from the Owoo family for a portion of the Achimota forest to be handed over to them, he recalled that based on nationwide agitation from owners of stool lands that government had acquired lands from them but were not being used to be returned to them, his Ministry set up a Committee to look at government’s property portfolio in terms of land to find out families compensations which had not been paid in consonance with the constitution to protect individuals from being deprived of their properties.
He said it was in line with this that the Committee was set up to examine the petition of the Owoo family.
Mr Hammah said he had left office by the time the recommendations by the Committee were made and therefore did not have much information on that.
