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A chartered surveyor, Osahene Kwaku Atekyi II, yesterday told the Judgement Debt Commission that most of the lands around the Volta River Basin Flooded Areas in the Volta Region were stool lands. That assertion went contrary to the position being held by many opinion leaders in the areas, who had told the commission that the lands belonged to their respective families. Those lands were flooded following the construction of the Akosombo Dam in 1965 and those affected were resettled by the state. However, some clans in Pai, Apaaso, Makango, Ahmandi and Krachi traditional areas who were resettled after the submerging of their houses and farmlands went back to the government 50 years after to ask for compensation. Consequently, Cabinet gave the approval on July 23, 2008 for a consolidated amount of compensation totalling GH�138 million for various stools and families in Pai, Apaaso, Makango, Ahmandi and Krachi traditional areas. Osahene Atekyi, who is also the Omanhene of the Kukuom Traditional Area in the Brong Ahafo Region, said his statement about the land ownership in the affected areas was based on intensive research and years of working experience with the Lands Commission. He said in the case of stool lands, the compensation did not go to family heads but rather shared among the stools and the district assemblies. Resettlement Some of the representatives of the beneficiary clans confirmed to the commission that they were indeed resettled after their lands had been submerged during the construction of the dam. But they claimed that the lands given to them were far less compared to their original settlements. They again told the commission that they received some compensation from the government beginning from 2009. At previous sittings, the commission raised serious issues with the discrepancies in the land documentations of the beneficiary clans. For instance, the representatives of the clans could not provide the original site plans for their respective submerged lands to the commission. The site plans that they made available did not have any dates. The Sole Commissioner, Mr Justice Yaw Apau, therefore, tasked the representatives of the clans to go and look for the original site plans for their submerged lands since the undated ones that they had produced could not stand any legal probing. Another difficulty that the commission had with the site plans was that they bore the names of individuals instead of the clans that they purported to have represented in securing the compensation. For instance, Mr Jackson Donkoh and Mr Bob Barimah, who claimed that they represented the Nchunae clan, had their names on the site plan instead of the names of their respective clans.