AEROPLANES FLYING INTO WA An airport is long overdue at Wa. And a request from the people for one has been on the agenda for a very long time now. However, modernisation cannot, must not come at cost to the people whose lives the (existence of the) airport is intended to enrich. Social amenities and infrastructure are built to SERVE the communities in which they are built. If building an airport or upgrading the airstrip will deprive any people of Wa shelter for themselves and their families, then the issue needs looking into in closer, greater detail than an arbitrary ultimatum to the people inhabiting the land to vacate it. Some of the inhabitants might as well have documentary claim to ownership of the land, as they claim they do. But, also, if an inhabitant has lived in a dwelling on the land without let or hindrance for fifty years - two generations - that duration of stay ought to entitle him to ownership at most or compensation at least. No one issued land record/documents in Wa in 1958. There was no Lands Commission in Wa at the time; it came to Wa twenty-three years ago. Any claimant without title making his claim from within the time the Lands Commission has been at Wa will have a poor case indeed. Some inhabitants have wilfully and deliberately flouted the Land laws and there should be no compunction in dealing firmly and swiftly with them. It appears an iron fist has been the stock-in-trade of modernisation cum globalisation everywhere it has gone. An airport or a revamped airstrip will literally open my hometown to the world beyond the Upper West itself and the northern regions. But in that opening up, we should encourage no desire to antagonise the little people at the mouth of that gateway waiting to embrace the passengers on the aeroplanes.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 10:54:38 +0000
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