One-village-one-dam not feasible – Kwesi Pratt

The One-village-one-dam campaign promise of the Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo is impracticable, the Managing Editor of the Insight Newspaper has said.

He thus described the promise as outlandish.

Nana Addo during his campaign tour of the Upper East region, pledged to create a dam a dam, in every village in the Northern region, should he emerge President after the December 7, polls.

This, he argued will boast agriculture in Ghana which currently stands at a paltry 30,000 out of 14million hectres of arable land.

“You have been hearing me talking about 1-District-1-Factory. As far as this part of the country is concerned, I even want to go further and talk about One-village-one-dam, to make sure that in every village, we have a functioning dam to support agriculture.

“If Ghana’s agriculture is working well, the nation is capable of feeding West Africa,” he stated.

But According to Mr. Pratt the promise from the NPP presidential candidate is an impossibility.

He further observed that it may even be unnecessary as it is not every single village in the North that is into farming.

Mr. Pratt, who is President John Mahama’s representative on the governing board of the National Media Commission (NMC) observed on Accra based Atinka FM on Monday that the promise sounds like an “insult” because of its unfeasibility.

“Let’s put politics aside and say the truth, is it in every village that you can build a dam? It’s not possible...its’ not possible to build one dam in every village...let somebody show me it is possible...even if it’s necessary, it’s not possible so why do you promise the impossible?” he quizzed.

He continued “Even with dams that are constructed like boreholes, there are areas you can’t build them because of the geology of the place so geographically it’s impossible to have a dam in every village.

“Number two, it may not even be necessary because not all villages are farming villages and not all villages have water problems an example is the one near the Volta river...how can you construct a dam near such a village?”

He thus urged Akufo-Addo to “slow down on such promises because they sound like insults...they make promises like they want to insult us because they may not be possible and necessary.”

Meanwhile, the NPP’s Member of Parliament for Nabdam in the Upper East region revealed that the ‘One dam, One Village’ promise made by Akufo-Addo was done as a result of demands from the indigenes of the region, hence the lack of a detailed execution plan.

Speaking on Morning Starr Monday, Boniface Gambila said “The public came to us with their needs when we arrived that we want a dam and we said, is it possible to do a dam and they said yes, so we said okay then it can be done.”