One Village One Dam is ‘Do As You Go’ project - Isaac Adongo mocks

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Bolgatanga Central Constituency, Isaac Adongo has decried the unavailability of a clear policy document and implementation manual that spells out the guidelines, specifications and terms for the implementation of the One Village One Dam project being executed by government in the northern part of the country.

The initiative which is being implemented under the auspices of the Special Initiatives Ministry and the Northern Development Authority seeks to make available water bodies in the forms of dams to enhance dry season farming and to serve animals.

The implementation of the project appears constrained with inadequate funding cited as one of the reasons for the shoddy nature of the dams that have been constructed under this special purpose vehicle.

According to Mr. Isaac Adongo, it has become difficult for the weaknesses of the initiative to be tracked based on a documented approach for criticism and improvement of the program.

“The One Village One Dam just like the many ‘do as you go’ projects, you can not find a clear policy document that says this is what we want to do under the one village one dam, these are the specifications, these are the engineering drawings, the size, amount of water to be collected, the size of land to be irrigated and the kinds of communities to be targeted and the quality of dam to be constructed. With a major project like that we should have a policy document” he said on Yem Radio in Bolgatanga monitored by MyNewsGh.com.

He further noted that the availability of an implementation document would have revealed the consultants on the project and the stakeholders involved in the roll out process.

“You have a project where everything is in somebody’s head and he is implementing it as he is going. So you are unable to speak to a weakness based on a documented approach which you can critique and improve”, he wondered.

About 40 dams are currently under various stages of completion in the Upper East region out of the 140 allocated.