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Agriculture in Ghana is mainly rain-fed and availability of water all year round is a problem.
The problem is worse in the northern part of the country where rainfall is generally scanty.
It was in the face of this problem that President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in 2017, started fulfilling his campaign promise of providing one dam in every village or community in the five northern regions of the country.
The Water Resource Commission (WRC) is in the news as saying that at least three dams constructed under the One-Village- One-Dam (1V1D) policy in the Upper East Region alone are unable to provide all-year-round water for both domestic and agricultural use due to shoddy works by the contractors.
The WRC says contractors who constructed the dams did not have the relevant skills and the government consulted private contractors rather than the Ghana Irrigation Authority.
The Commission said other challenges included inadequate knowledge of community members regarding the technicalities involved in the siting and construction of reservoirs and lack of data on the policy.
It is unfortunate that a system meant to facilitate dry-season farming and resolve challenges with the availability of water for domestic use has turned out to dash all hopes of the people who now see their problems rather compounded.
We are worried just as the people are because most of them are peasant farmers and animal keepers whose livelihoods are threatened in the dry season.
That threat has a number of implications that are everyone’s guess.
If what the WRC is saying is anything to go by, then it is legitimate to question the government regarding why the contract for the implementation of a critical policy like the 1V1D should be offered to contractors who are not experts in the construction of earth dams.
Was it a case of the government “giving the job to the boys”?
We have learnt that way back in 2019, it cost an average of GH¢250000 to construct one such dam, so it means that it is a great financial loss to the state if more dams cannot be put to use.
It was common knowledge that even some rivers and natural wells dried up during the dry season in the northern parts of the country and so the understanding was that the dams to be provided under the 1V1D arrangement were going to be ones that could withstand the odds of the dry season.
As things stand now, it is not surprising that the National President of the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, Mr Wepia Addo Awal Adugwada, says many stakeholders have lost hope in the government because its initiatives such as the 1V1D purposed to enhance the agriculture sector have failed to meet expectations of farmers.
We hope the government will institute a probe into the shoddiness of dams under the 1V1D initiative and offenders surcharged with the cost of repairs or the construction of new ones.
Then, as the WRC has proposed, project managers must consult relevant institutions like the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority to assist in the execution of the projects to promote efficiency.
