Its unethical to sell Museum lands in absence of board

SOME personnel of the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB) have described the sale of a land belonging to the Board to a private investor as inappropriate and unethical in the absence of a board of directors.
They said the former Minister for Chieftancy and Culture, Mr Sampson Kwaku Boafo, dissolved the board of directors in April 2007 and since then it had not been reconstituted.
To that effect, they argued that any asset of the GMMB could only be leased by the board of directors, which does not exist, or by the minister.
According to the personnel, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) had warned the private investor, MNEST Metals Company, to stop work on the land but the warning had gone unheeded, as work on the company’s building was in progress.
“The land is for the government and no one has the right to sell it,” the personnel said and emphasised that those who sold the land had taken undue advantage of the absence of the board of directors to dispose of it.
“No one in the GMMB knows who sold it. We have not been informed about the sale or introduced to the company which bought it. We do not know how much it was sold for because no one has accounted for the sale of the land, which is supposed to be used for the construction of apartments for personnel,” the personnel noted.
The personnel said the private investor had earlier threatened to eject personnel of the GMMB residing in an apartment on the property, if they failed to meet an evacuation deadline.
The personnel said the company was also using water free of charge from the GMMB to construct its office building on the said land, which is behind the GMMB’s offices.
The personnel further disclosed that the Museums and Monuments Board had a seven-member management team of which four knew nothing about the sale of the land to the private investor, whilst the other three members had refused to comment on the sale of the land.
The personnel, however, pointed out that they had reported the sale of the land to the Chief Director of the Ministry, Mrs Emma Lilian Bruce-Lyle, who had so far sent a team to ascertain the truth.

Caption : The front view of the uncompleted building belonging to the private investor.