“Stop work”: Lands Ministry halts construction on Bulgarian Embassy land
The deputy minister gave the order when he stormed the construction site in Accra, home to the old Bulgarian embassy, on Wednesday (16 March 2022) to see evidence of flouting of regulations and the rule of law by the building contractor and his clients
The deputy minister of lands and natural resources Benito Owusu-Bio has directed a private property developer, Dr Adu Ampomah, to halt, as a matter of urgency, all construction work on a parcel of land owned by the Bulgarian Embassy.
The deputy minister gave this directive when he visited the building site under contention in Accra on Wednesday (16 March 2022).
Speaking to the caretaker for the site, Owusu-Bio insisted that the ongoing work on site must be put on hold while the dispute over ownership of the land is settled in court.
The deputy minister announced that the Bulgarian Embassy has a ten-year sublease which has not yet expired.
“We are aware of a litigation between the embassy and the developer,” Owusu-Bio said. “So, if anything at all, in the interim, nobody must be here working.”
The minister also said: “Yesterday, when we heard of this, we asked the Lands Commission to put a ‘stop work’ notice on the premises but our attention has been drawn to the fact that those notices have been removed.”
He stressed that the Lands Commission is constitutionally mandated to bar the private developer from working and urged that the owner of the structure stop work while investigations are ongoing.
For his part, the deputy minister of foreign affairs Kwaku Ampratwum-Sarpong told reporters that the private property developer has no authorisation or support from the government to continue building and must stop work with immediate effect.
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