Minister of Food and Agriculture Bryan Acheampong has debunked claims that the One Village One Dam programme under the Akufo Addo government has failed.
According to the minister, the dams were made with the intention of collecting and storing water for later use to which he describes as being useful.
The government and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture have come under heavy criticism over what has been described as a failure of the government’s flagship programmes, Planting for Food and Jobs and one village one dam.
These criticisms come on the back of the government’s directive to ban the export of grains from Ghana over fears of a possible food crisis resulting from droughts in some parts of the middle and northern belts of the country.
Many Ghanaians have questioned the purpose of the over GHS 3 billion spent on the two programmes ((PFJ: GHS2.9billion from 2017 to 2023, 1V1D: 574 dams at a cost of GHS250,000 each).
However, in an interview with 3Business’ Paa Kwesi Asare, on Business Focus, the minister refuted the claims arguing the dams have served their intended purposes to the fullest.
“There is a big difference between an irrigation scheme and a dam. A dam holds water. The irrigation brings water from the water body into the dam. The whole idea in the NPP manifesto One Village, One dam which was concentrated up north was: they only had one major planting season, just one, unlike the south that we have the major and the minor”, he said.
The sector minister continued, “Now the rains there are very heavy within a very short period of time and when it rains, the water just runs off. So, the idea was that then let’s build these dugouts to hold the rain water. So, we have done 574 or so of them and that have served the purpose very well in terms of holding the rain water, in this case, there were no rains to be able to fill the dams so that the farmers will use.”
He further continued that the dams were very effective last year when the country had more rains leading to bumper harvest.
3 news.com