Equipping and Recognising the Cadastral Surveyors Role in Development Information in Ghana.
Akrofi E.O. and Ayer, J
Lecturers at the Department of Geomatic Engineering,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology,
Kumasi, Ghana.
Abstract
Spatial information is now recognized by governments as essential in supporting economic, social and environmental interests of a nation. The existence of accurate maps (analogue and digital) and unimpeachable record of rights assists and renders more efficient every branch of public service that deals with land. The cadastre is essential for sustainable national development of every nation.
Cadastral information in Ghana is provided through cadastral surveys. Cadastral surveys are regulated by the Survey Act, Act 127 of 1962, which gave legal backing to the Director of Surveys to carryout such surveys through official surveyors who are directly under him or to license experience surveyors, most of whom have been trained at the Survey School. Most of the early surveyors were technicians and were down the ladder in most organizational structures.
Although, the training of Cadastral surveyors (Geomatic Engineers) has greatly been improved and the numbers of graduates are growing, discrimination against these graduates in most organizations still persists. The paper conclude that human resource development should not only be seen as building of training programs, but should ensure changes in organizational structures and recruitment qualifications to allow needed skills enhance management of geospatial information for national development.
Background
The challenge of balancing the competing tensions in decision-making requires access to accurate and relevant information in a readily interactive form. There is for instance the need for reliable data for environmental monitoring, social and economic rights recordation, the facilitation of appropriate decision-making and conflict resolution.
Spatial information can best be described as development information and as the name suggests should be what developments are based on and also what need to be made available for national planning and public knowledge at all sectors of governance. It is an enabling concept with the ability to bring together many sectors, disciplines and communities of practice to co-manage and respond to the arrays of economic, social and environmental activities in the interest of any nation.
Such information can only best be provided by well trained geo-information personnel whose roles as important information providers should be recognized for delivering this objective.
Spatial information is gradually being recognised by governments as essential in supporting the economic, social and environmental interests of a nation. Such needed development information must be complete, up-to-date, interoperable, and readily available as an impetus for managing widespread, long- and short-term disaster events, domestic security, environmental degradation and the improvement of communities’ infrastructure and planning decisions. The existence of accurate maps (analogue and digital) and unimpeachable record of rights assists and renders more efficient every branch of public service that deals with land. This is true for land reform, town and country planning schemes, taxation, irrigation, drainage and flood control, agricultural development and others. Thus spatial information is a necessary requirement for sustainable development of every nation. Enemark (2005) states that the basic building blocks in any land administration is the land parcel as identified in the cadastre. This is in line with the assertion that geo-spatial data and information must be considered as part of the substructure or foundation of a society, resulting in the concept of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs).
The advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) in the last decade combined with the rapid growth of information networks, is transforming businesses and markets, and revolutionizing, information flows, and also catalyzing the empowerment of citizens and communities in new ways. These gains are however yet to be exploited by most developing countries to advantage.
The United Nations, recognizing the inter-relationship and perhaps inseparability of spatial information from statistical data and ICT, re-organized in 1998, the then-to separate review fora and conferences on Cartography, ICT and Statistics under one umbrella called Committee on development information (CODI) in order to build synergy.
The expectation was that African Nations would begin to appreciate the importance of Development Information use through the adoption of initiatives such as AISI (African Information Society Initiative), which sort to build a multi-stakeholder information society in Africa involving, the Academia, African Engineers, Civil society, the private sector and the media among others.