Upper East floods could be contained - Dery

Bolgatanga, Sept. 4, GNA - Heads of Departments attending a meeting organized by the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council have assured the Upper East Regional Minister, Alhassan Samari, that the flood situations would be contained this year should the phenomenon reoccur. The Heads of Agriculture, National Disaster Management Organizations, (NADMO), the Ghana Red Cross Society and some key players in disaster related areas said during a meeting with Mr Samari that there was no cause for alarm or fear of floods that had the potential to displace people as it did last year.

Mr Francis Dery, Acting Regional Director of Agriculture, said there were series of indications of bumper harvest this year in spite of the scattered droughts in the region in the beginning of the farming season. He said the rains experienced so far could adequately guarantee moisture to sustain crops for the rest of the season if even the rains stopped in the middle of September, saying, "The region is heading towards a good harvest". Mr Dery noted that the various dams located in the region had gathered enough water that could be sufficiently used for dry season farming for food production to augment the traditional rain-fed crop produced this farming season.

He said as part of government's efforts to mitigate the cost of food production as a result of the global hike on food prices, it had demonstrated high sense of responsibility by subsidizing the cost of fertilizers to farmers and reintroduced the rice production project where farms were prepared on gratis for farmers.

Mr Dery said the reintroduction of the project beginning with 400 hectares of land for 53 farmer groups drawn from the Builsa, Kassena-Nankana, Bolgatanga and Bongo Districts, had taken an innovative form.

He said beneficiary farmers were involved at the preparatory stage of the farms and were given some extension advice as to how to effectively manage the farms to prevent theft and burning at the maturity stage. Mr Dery attributed the general improvement of the agricultural situation in the region to government subsidies on fertilizers and other farm inputs.

He said his outfit had distributed about 31,500 coupons for sulphate of ammonia, 30,500 coupons for compound fertilizers and 6,750 coupons for urea to farmers in the region. Mr Anderson Anabia Anafo, Regional Coordinator of NADMO, said he was optimistic that with the strategies put in place for the spillage of water from the Bagre Dam in neighbouring Burkina Faso, floods were not likely to occur in the region.

He said even though some areas such as the Builsa and Bawku East Districts had experienced floods they were as a result of continuous rains which could be contained.

Mr Anafo said his outfit was ready and could contain the flood situation following the preparations made so far with disaster related organizations in the region adding that "we are ready and there is no cause for alarm".

District and Municipal Assemblies in the region also expressed their readiness to contain any eventuality should it occur and gave assurances to members of the public not to panic as the situation could be contained this year.