The President of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors (GhIS), Dr Anthony Arko-Adjei, has highlighted the need for a regulation or a law that will help deal with quack surveyors.
He claimed that it was past time for us to pass legislation to hold quack surveyors accountable for their actions, which were undermining the profession’s dignity.
He expressed disappointment at the number of individuals who claimed to be surveyors, despite lacking the necessary skills.
“We need laws and regulations to be able to bring members and quack surveyors to book; that’s what we want the government to help us to do. There are so many unscrupulous persons parading themselves as surveyors who don’t have the requisite skills to do the work they are doing,” he said.
Dr Arko-Adjei said both the GhIS and LiSAG were working with the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to get the Surveying Council Bill, which had been in the system for close to 25 years, passed to push out the quack surveyors.
He urged Ghanaians to be cautious of individuals who claim to be surveyors.
According to him, there were many quack surveyors who had not been trained, and therefore lacked the requisite skills and qualifications to take up work as surveyors in the name of the GhIS and the Licensed Surveyors Association of Ghana (LiSAG).
He revealed that the Association had now come up with stamps for professional surveyors that distinguished them from the quacks, and urged the public to be on the look for the trained and licensed surveyors when hiring them for their services.
He made the statements during the International Federation of Surveyors (FIG) Working Week closing ceremony in Accra last Thursday.
The ceremony was on the theme: “Your World, Our World: Resilient Environment and Sustainable Resource Management for All”.
The conference brought together over 1,000 surveyors from across different fields from 90 countries.
Samuel Larbi Darko, President of LiSAG, stated that the conference enabled surveyors from around the world to share knowledge, best practices, and experiences in order to advance their profession.
He said that the meeting would assist the government in developing land-management policies to handle issues such as unlawful mining and flooding in the country.
In his view, illegal mining had grave consequences on the local environment, adding that there was the need for surveyors to be involved as they had the expertise “to be able to pinpoint where the mineral deposits are so that the area can be demarcated to strictly restrict the miners to the demarcated area” in order not to destroy other portions with their expansive prospecting.
He appealed to the government to support surveyors with the needed funding to do “topographic survey to determine the nature of the surface of the land and ascertain where there are hills, valleys and rivers, and give it to the authorities to do proper planning”.
By: Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
