'1V1D dugouts insult to northerners, we'll prosecute Hawa Koomson for financial loss' – NDC

A future government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) will prosecute Mavis Hawa Koomson, the Minister of Special Development Initiatives, for causing financial loss to the state as far as the one village-one dam (1V1D) programme is concerned.

At a press conference organised at one of the dried-up dams at Nakpachie in the Northern Region, the Communication Director of the NDC, Mr Sammy Gyamfi, said: “The much-touted one village-one dam programme of the government has failed to achieve its intended purpose of driving all-year agriculture in northern Ghana”.

“You’ve heard Bawumia brag about one village-one dam; you’ve heard President Akufo-Addo himself, shamelessly, brag about having constructed dams in northern Ghana. What you see here today, this structure, this excavated area, which doesn’t even have a drop of water, not even a teaspoon of water, is what this government has been bragging about.

“That should let you know how dishonest, how deceptive, and wicked this government is”, Mr Gyamfi told journalists.

According to him, the “shoddy” job done by the government, is a total waste of taxpayers’ money.

“You know that they constructed these things knowing very well that they were not doing any meaningful thing that can stand the test of time. And since November, December last year, when the rainy season had barely ended in the northern part of Ghana, the majority of these excavated ponds began to dry up and had no water for the consumption of even livestock let alone farming activity.

“We believe that it would have been more prudent and a judicious use of the taxpayers’ money if the government had channelled the resources wasted on these substandard excavated ponds and dugouts which have dried up, on proper small-scale irrigation dams like the ones done by John Dramani Mahama and the NDC and similar ones currently being constructed by JICA in some parts of the country.

“We have a development partner JICA, who have been constructing small-scale irrigation dams in Ghana, not today. They construct these dams at a cost of GHS2.5 million per dam and you want to build similar dams at GHS256,000?”, Mr Gyamfi asked.

“And, so, what any sensible government would have done, would have been to aggregate these resources instead of wasting GHS256,000 on an excavated pond, which will dry up in a matter of months”, he suggested.

He then served notice that the appointees of President Akufo-Addo who are in charge of “scams” such as the 1V1D and others, will not spared prosecution by the next NDC government.

“It is our contention that the one village-one dam programme, like similar tokenisms being championed by this Akufo-Addo government, constitutes a huge financial loss to the state and since this government is determined to stay the course of wasting our scarce resources on such counterproductive measures, which, in most cases, only facilitate the plundering of our resources into private pockets, we wish to reiterate the point that a future government of the NDC shall investigate and prosecute all persons associated with such deceptive schemes including this one village-one dam scam.

“To this end, we want to sound a strong caution to the likes of madam Hawa Koomson, the Minister of Special Development Initiatives and others like her, that they stand, quote me anywhere, as good candidates for prosecution for the offence of willfully causing financial loss to the state when power changes hands.

“Their day of accountability, their day of reckoning, is fast approaching and will surely come because this is sad, this is painful; this is insulting to the people of the north”, Mr Gyamfi warned.