28 Suspected Land Guards Arrested At Tuba

Twenty-eight suspected land guards have been arrested by a task force jointly established by the Ga South Municipal Assembly and the Ghana Armed Forces. The Public Relations Officer of the assembly, Mr Elliot Adom, who confirmed this in an interview, said the police were in the process of taking their statements for them to be put before court. He warned that the task force would not spare any future offenders. Task force The task force was set up recently to rid the municipality of land guards who have been terrorising developers for the past three months. Following reports that land guards had surfaced at Tuba, a farming community in the municipality, and were terrorising developers, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Jerry Akwei Thompson, initiated moves for the establishment of the task force. A developer�s experience In one of the reports to the assembly which prompted the establishment of the task force, a developer, Mrs Catherine Boateng, said the land guards were at Tuba trying to sell a plot under an overhead electricity transmission line to a land developer to put up a residential accommodation. Mrs Boateng, who granted an interview to the Daily Graphic, said the land guards went to the place on motorbikes armed with machetes and threatened to chop off the head of anyone who dared challenge them. She said when they started pegging the land, she became furious and attempted to stop them from demarcating the land in front of her house. According to her, the land guards did not take kindly to her action and started assaulting her until she sustained bruises on her face. She said she sought refuge at the Ga South Municipal Assembly offices where she lodged a complaint with the MCE who quickly dispatched the joint task force to the area to effect their arrest. She said the task force succeeded in arresting 28 of the land guards, while the rest took to their heels. Mrs Boateng revealed that the land guards had been a source of worry and concern to the residents and developers as their activities, which involved forcibly taking land from their bona fide owners and re-selling them, had caused a lot of problems in the area.