The intention of the government was to construct a dam in the Dachio community of the Bolgatanga East District and in other communities of northern Ghana to serve irrigation purposes to reduce urban migration. Unfortunately, the dam that was constructed in 2018 has never served its purpose to ensure the community members are engaged in all year-round cultivation of crops and vegetables.
The chief of Dachio, Naba Thomas Adongo Akaliga II said the dam was shoddily constructed and cannot contain enough water for farming purposes. Again, the chief said the government has rather punish the community members by endangering their lives in its quest to construct a befitting irrigation dam
“Where they constructed the spillway was a road passing through my palace but it is now like a river. This dam, they [government] only came to punish Dachio. They don’t want to help us with any water. Our animals don’t come here to drink, they choose to go to the boreholes because the water in the dam doesn’t last”
Naba Akaliba who described the dam as flat as a football park and “does not help anybody in Dachio”, called on the government to reconstruct the dam for it to serve the purpose of farming.
On his part, assemblymember for the Dachio electoral area, Alhaji Zakaria Agambire said the dam was poorly constructed because there was no supervision during its construction.
“The intention of creating a dam for us to have dry season farming was good. And we had good land for them to construct the dam at the top side, whereby the top bottom will be used for dry-season farming. That has not been done. So, this dam that they constructed has not served its purpose”
Alhaji Zakaria expressed regrets that the dam is not fit for purpose, adding that the community members can no longer farm on the land used for the dam construction.
“Frankly speaking, the farmlands have been destroyed because the part that is used for the dam does not even contain water, we can’t even use it for any farming. You have brought a dam for us, we are not getting the dam and the land that we were using to do our farming in the rainy season, we are not getting it again”, he bemoaned.
The chief of Dachio community and the residents vent their anger on the government when some journalists in the Upper East Region were in the community to ascertain from the community members what they make of the dam.
The visit by the journalists to the community followed research findings conducted by the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA). The research findings titled “Ghana’s oil money on dried dams”, funded by the Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) sought to ascertain whether the policy is serving the purpose – all-year-round farming.
The research findings unravelled that the government spent a whopping amount of Ghc 670, 000 to construct each dam under its flagship program, 1 Village 1 Dam instead of the Ghc250,000 that was contained in the contract documented and communicated to Ghanaians.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Joshua Asaah|Dachio|Ghana
