The Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA) has petitioned the Auditor-General regarding the government’s flagship irrigation programme, One Village One Dam.
In a letter signed by the Executive Director for NORPRA, Bismark Adongo Ayorogo, he called on the Auditor-General to audit the projects and ascertain whether the projects are value for money.
Many of the dams, Mr. Ayorogo stated in his letter, have been executed poorly.
“While recognizing the important role of small earth dams in the socio-economic transformation of communities in northern Ghana, we wish to share with you the state of government’s one village, one dam (1V1D) with documentary evidence and to register our disappointment over the poor state of the 1V1D in our communities.”
Through the letter, NORPRA also reminded the Auditor-General of its earlier decision to audit government flagship programmes.
“We were pleased and inspired by a policy statement in the 2018 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government (Page 61, Paragraph 276) that the Audit Service was increasing its audit coverage on government’s new policies such as One Village One Dam among others to ascertain value for money. However, we have since not sighted any audit report from your Service on these 1V1D projects. As you may be aware, the 1V1D projects were funded by the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) of Ghana’s oil revenue to achieve the policy objectives of promoting double cropping in a year (2018 Budget, Paragraph 394), increase agricultural productivity, enhance food security and reduce the food import bill, (2017 Budget, Paragraph 496) for improved livelihoods of the people. For purposes of promoting transparency and accountability of public resource management and establishing value for money for these projects, we are invoking your constitutional mandate of auditing all public accounts to conduct an audit on all the 1V1D projects in Northern Ghana,” portions of the letter read.
Meanwhile, another petition has been sent to the Speaker of Parliament requesting a parliamentary inquiry into the state of the dams.
Source: A1Radioonline.Com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Bolgatanga|
