Equipping and Recognising the Cadastral Surveyors Role in Development Information in Ghana.
An overview of the present title registration scheme introduced in 1986 shows that its impact in ensuring and enhancing security of tenure has not been significant. It was prescribed that the process be undertaken in a progressive manner within the registration districts declared, however the method adopted by the Land Title Registry was sporadic. After 15 years of operation with 22 registration districts declared only 12,000 titles had been registered as at 2001 (LAP, 2003). Inadequate manpower and logistics are major contributing factors to these problems.
GEO-INFORMATION TRAINING IN GHANA.
In Ghana, training in spatial information sciences is done at two levels. Technical level training at the Ghana Survey and Mapping school established decades ago to train surveyors and cartographers for the civil institutions involved in Land administration. In 1992, following institutional needs appraisal by a World Bank team for the implementation of the Ghana Environmental Resource Management Project, this school was recommended for upgrading to Higher National Diploma (HND) awarding level and new training curricula was developed for this new program in 1996. The school is therefore currently accredited to run HND programs in the specialized areas covered in its curricula that includes specializations in Land surveying, Cartography, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Geographic information systems (GIS).
The second level training is at the Geomatic Engineering Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi which runs courses in Geomatic Engineering from the Bachelor of Science level up to the Philosophy degree (PhD) levels. Here, training in Geomatic Engineering has been directed to the education of students and professionals to imbue in them practical skills, attitudes and values that will allow them to understand and model space.
The principal aim is to equip graduates with sufficient knowledge and synergies so they can in turn provide services to industry in these fields as well as provide the students themselves with the possibilities of further research and development in the spatial sciences. The department used to be known as Geodetic Engineering Department but to reflect the impact of technological advances on surveying and spatial information management, the Department recently changed its name to the Department of Geomatic Engineering.
Training in Geomatic Engineering encompasses the traditional areas of Land Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Engineering Surveying and Hydrography, as well as the comparatively new fields of Satellite Surveying, Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems, Database Systems and other Spatial Information disciplines. The programme aims at training students to acquire skills and technical know-how in the acquisition, analysis, storage, distribution, management and application of spatially referenced data.
The very practical nature of Geomatic Engineering as recognised by the Department requires a considerable number of subjects to be taught, together with lengthy field practical hours. The objective is to produce professionally skilled graduate Geomatic Engineers. Furthermore, being needful of the integration of different skills in professional practice the course also incorporated a strong computer programming and IT knowledge to enhance the stature of our graduates making them immediately employable after graduation.
Geographic Information systems is introduced in our undergraduate curriculum at the third year and final years with students taking two pure GIS courses and an additional course in Database systems. The training in GIS has ranged from the simple use of GIS software for land administration and land use planning, network and route planning, environmental and ecological planning, to the use of built in software development tools through to the integrating and interspacing GIS software with high level programming languages in order to produce custom developed products.
Thus our GIS training has incorporated both a detailed theoretical perspective of the development and the principles of Geographic information systems and an applied approach to several applications tailored to specific user needs. Thus our students will readily after graduation fit into the professional Surveying grade, the IT and computer application grades, the utilities and the earth science and environmental application fields among many others.
Three years ago, the Department received an educational FIG/ESRI grant package of twenty-five (25) ArcGIS licenses from ESRI. This has greatly enhanced our training in GIS. Since the receipt of the grant package, we have been training students and other interested members of the university community in GIS using the ArcGIS software.
Our goal is to develop this laboratory and enlarged it to become a Regional Centre capable of attracting international trainees from the Sub-Region especially from the fields of Engineering, Earth Sciences, Planning and Urban studies, Agriculture, Culture and Tourism, Social Sciences and Geography.
To emphasise the inter-disciplinary use of geo-information in different professions, the Department teaches introductory Surveying courses to students from other disciplines such as civil engineering, planning, land economy, architecture, agriculture, biological sciences, petrochemical engineering, Renewable natural resources, and Geography. Some of these departments take additional course in GIS.
In line with the strategic objective of KNUST, the Department of Geomatic Engineering, aspires to provide manpower training, research and innovation in science and technology for sustainable development in Africa, especially in the area of geo-data information. In this regard the Department has been increasing its student population from 40 in the year 2000 to the current level of 75 students for its BSc course. There are currently 10 postgraduate students in the Department. The number of foreign students is also on the increase. These increasing numbers of graduates need opportunities to contribute their Knowledge and expertise for sustainable development.
Professional Prospects and Recognition
People assess how fairly they are treated by considering outcomes and inputs into their jobs. Outcomes are things the person receives on the job such as pay, recognition, satisfaction and others, whiles inputs are the contributions the person makes to the organisation, effort, time talents and others. Also people pay attention to outcomes and inputs others similar professionals receive (Bateman and Snell, 2002). Thus lack of recognition and opportunities can be de-motivating to geo-data professionals in Ghana if current trends are not reversed.
The real challenge is to understand people’s approach to the utilisation of services of geo-information providers in decision making. This may well call for the need for society to undergo a fundamental change in the way that it thinks about jobs and service delivery which require integrated processes using Geo-data and some Geo-processing tools. In Ghana, many organisations that clearly require the services of Geomatic Engineers especially in the public services do not have this need directly established in their manpower establishment warrants. This is probably because, until the late nineteen seventies surveying at the professional level in Ghana had been studied as a branch of the Civil Engineering program, therefore no mention is made of Geodetic or Geomatic Engineering, despite the growing number of geomatic engineers.
Enemark (2006) has has argued that although strategies for capacity assessment and development can be focused on any level, it is crucial that strategies are formulated on a basis of sound analysis of all relevant dimensions. Organisational capacity – such as the capacity of the national cadastral agency or geo-spatial training institute, is influenced by not only the internal structures, and procedures of the agency or institute, but also by the collective capabilities of the staff on the one hand and a number of external
factors. Such external factors may be political, economic, cultural or institutional issues that may constrain or support performance, efficiency, and legitimacy as well as the whole level of awareness of the values of geo-spatial development information. By taking this approach, capacity measures can be addressed in a more comprehensive societal context.
Human resource development should not be viewed as only the building of training programs. It should also include changing recruitment qualifications especially in the public services where inertia has prevented expansions to allow for skills that are clearly needed to enhance performance in the organizations.
References:
- Bateman, T. S., and Snell, A.S., (2002) Management: Competing in the New Era. 5th Edition, McGraw-Hill Companies.
- FAO, (1995) Cadastral surveys and records of rights in Land. Rome.
- Enemark, S, (2006) Capacity Building for Institutional Development in Surveying and Land Management, Proceedings of 5th FIG Regional Conference on Promoting Land Administration and Good Governance, 8 – 11th March 2006, Accra, Ghana.
- Enemark, S, (2005) Innovative Technology for Land Administration. Proceedings of a symposium held by FIG Commission 7 on 24th and 25th June 2005 at the University of Wisconsin, USA.
- Groot R; Mc Laughlin J, (2000) Geo Spatial Data Infrastructure, Oxford University Press