Daniel Kwame Gariba, DCE for the Builsa South District in the Upper East Region is convinced that despite the pooh-poohing of the government’s ambitious One Village One Dam project (1V1D), by opponents and critics of the Akufo-Addo led government, the programme has been largely successful.
Mr Gariba explained that in his area, 10 of the dams have been successfully completed and are serving the people of the area. He explained that during the dry season, animals no longer go long distances in search of water.
Again, residents in the area, who are largely farmers, can continue their farming throughout the year because of the availability of water.
Mr Gariba said this when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
In 2017, the Government of Ghana launched its One Village, One Dam initiative (1V1D), which seeks to make irrigation accessible to small-scale farmers in Northern Ghana. This initiative is being implemented in five regions of northern Ghana that have consistently been ranked by the Ghana Living Standards Survey as the poorest in the country.
The five regions include the traditional Upper East Region, Upper West Region and the Northern Region. The rest are the recently created Savannah Region and North East Region.
The project has envisaged developing 570 small dams in various communities to support dry-season gardening and livestock rearing leading to enhanced food security, incomes and people’s wellbeing.
Mr Gariba said “a lot of people poohed-poohed it. A lot of people laughed at it but it was a novelty of a project meant to benefit Northern Ghana in particular. When the President and the Vice President went around during the campaign, one thing they asked for is a dam. The president saw that there was a need to have that kind of project. That brought about the 1V1D policy which was fully executed. In Builsa South for example, we had 10 of them.”
“I always say that Builsa South is one of the places we have the best dams constructed. People can doubt it, they can dispute it but when you go into the communities, the dams are there serving the people,” he added.
It would be recalled that in 2019, A1 Radio’s Joshua Asaah did a documentary on the shoddy construction works under government 1V1D project; the documentary was titled ‘Thirsty Dams of the North’.
In that report, State authorities admitted the shortcomings of the project.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
