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The Okataban family has petitioned the Judgement Debt Commission to intervene and impress on the State Housing Company Limited (SHC) to pay the family an outstanding compensation for the acquisition of a stretch of land at Adentan in Accra. Counsel for the family, Mr Benjamin Badu Quaye, told the commission yesterday that the High Court gave judgement in 1994 for the payment of 600 million old cedis (GH�60,000) as compensation to the family. He said the charges and cost raised the amount to 725 million old cedis (GH�72,500). Mr Quaye stated that following the judgement, the then State Housing Corporation paid 100 million old cedis (GH�10,000) to the family and pleaded for enough time to seek government intervention. He said ever since that payment, the SHC had not made any additional payment to the family, as successive managing directors had refused to pay the balance. Mr Quaye said the SHC later raised some concerns with regard to procedure and consequently took the case back to the High Court. He opined that in 2013, the High Court gave a ruling to set aside the 1994 judgement. Mr Quaye said the court held that the family was supposed to sue the state but not the SHC. He said he disagreed with the court's position because the family joined the Attorney General to the suit. Mr Quaye claimed that the SHC had since been selling portions of the land and keeping the money to itself without giving any part to the government. SHC response When he took his turn, the Managing Director of SHC, Dr Mark Nii Akwei Ankrah, said the company decided to go back to court because the family had not used the right procedure in prosecuting the matter. Luckily, Dr Ankrah said, the court held that the right procedure was not followed. He noted that the SHC was not refusing to pay the compensation but was only concerned about the procedure used by the family. Dr Ankrah denied that the SHC had sold portions of the land, and indicated that it only regularised the status of the lands that had been sold out to private individuals by the family.