The African Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP) is calling on the Auditor General to probe how much of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) was disbursed for rehabilitating specific dams across the country.
The Centre also said, the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA) has not been proactive in ensuring that evaluation of rehabilitation works on some of the dams were carried out well.
At a Stakeholder engagement meeting on ‘Impact Evaluation of Oil Funded Projects’ in the country, of which some dams, notably Dawa, Keyime and Ohawu have been funded with ABFA; ACEP’s Policy Analyst, Linda Ahunu, said the situation at Ohawu, needs critical attention.
In 2014, an amount of GHS2, 037,858.73 was allocated for the rehabilitation of both the Keyime Dam and the Ohawu Dam in the Agortime Ziope District and the Ketu North Municipal Assembly respectively.
The rehabilitation work was expected to have been completed since 2016.
However, while the Keyime Dam is 90 percent complete, the contractor, on the Ohawu project, Gruma Twins, has completed only 60 percent of work with no details on when the final phase of the project will be completed.
“It is on this note that further probes must be done to find out why the Ohawu Project, as at now, hasn’t been completed, since the livelihood of the indigenes is dependent on it” Madam Ahunu said.
The mishaps, she explained, shows that GIDA, the Ministry of Finance and agencies responsible for selection, budgeting and planning of projects implemented under the ABFA have a lot to learn from the successes and ‘failures’ of oil funded projects to serve as models for future projects.
The Ohawu dam serves the Ohawu community, the Ohawu Agricultural College and 10 other surrounding communities for their domestic, livestock rearing and farming applications.
The dam which was constructed in the late 1970’s, later became malfunctional when its wall collapsed.
The Ohawu community requested for the reconstruction of the dam wall, extension of the dam canal and construction of a walkway along the ends of the dam.
However, Chief of Ohawu, Togbe Tuafli II, said incompletion of the dam and the collapse of its walls has been posing health risks to the townsfolk.
He said there were unsuccessful attempts to rehabilitate the dam in 2000 and the recent initiative, which started from 2013, also to a large extent, has remained uncompleted.
“The water is totally discoloured and that is what a town of more than 5,000 indigenes use for their daily activities since there is no pipe-borne water in the town,” he added.
By Wisdom Jonny-Nuekpe
