NORPRA PETITIONS HON.SPEAKER OF PARLIAMENT ON ONE VILLAGE, ONE DAM AND THE PWAULUGU MULTI-PURPOSE DAM PROJECTS IN NORTHERN GHANA

Mr. Speaker, we the undersigned and thumb-printed are members of civil society organizations and beneficiary communities of Government’s One Village, One Dam (1V1D) and Pwalugu Multi-purpose Dam projects in northern Ghana.

We are very grateful to you for the opportunity to present this petition. While recognizing the important role of small earth dams in the socio-economic transformation of communities in northern Ghana, we wish to share with you the state of government’s one village, one dam (1V1D) and the Pwalugu Multi-Purpose Dam with documentary evidence (Videos & pictures) and to register our disappointment over the poor state of the 1V1D and the non-existent Pwalugu Multi-Purpose Dam.

Mr. Speaker, we are here purposely to seek your intervention as father of the house of our representatives to get government and other actors involved in the construction of the 1V1D and the Pwalugu Multi-purpose Dam to account to the good people of Ghana through this august house (Parliament).

Mr. Speaker, in theory, the One Village, One Dam Policy as one of Government’s flagship programmes under the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP) was meant to facilitate and promote double cropping in a year (2018 Budget, Parag 394), increase agricultural productivity, enhance food security and reduce the food import bill, (2017 Budget, Parag. 496) for improved livelihoods of the people. This was greeted with great excitement by many across the country. As a matter of fact, the people of Northern Ghana in particular were drowned in indescribable joy.
Mr. Speaker, this joy was however short-lived as none of the 570 dams constructed by the then Ministry of Special Development Initiatives (MSDI) in Northern Ghana contains water for all year-round farming in beneficiary communities.

Mr. Speaker, we wish to point out that the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA), a civil society organization based in Bolgatanga with funding support from the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), engaged in tracking the 1V1D expenditure and performance from 2017 to May 2024. We found that all the dams are always dried up in the dry season, a period water is very much needed for dry season farming to address issues of low agricultural productivity, food insecurity, unemployment, poverty and hunger in line with the policy objective of 1V1D.
Mr. Speaker, NORPRA also found out that, on the average, six hundred and seventy thousand Ghana cedis (Ghc670,000) of Ghana’s oil money was spent on each 1V1D project. This gave a total amount of three hundred and eighty-one million nine hundred thousand Ghana Cedis (Ghc381,900,000.00). Consultancy fee which was 10% of the contract sum stood at thirty-eight million, one hundred and ninety Ghana cedis (Ghc38,190,000.00).

Mr. Speaker, our right to information was also not respected and protected as information sought under the Right to Information Act, 2019 (ACT 989) from the Special Development Initiative Secretariat (SDI) and the Public Procurement Authority (PPA) on how procurement of the 1V1D projects were done was denied.

Mr. Speaker, it is a historical fact that properly designed and constructed small dams in some communities in northern Ghana have been acknowledged in evaluation works done under the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS, 2003) and the works of Kpieta B. etal, (2013) and Acheampong etal, (2014) to have significantly contributed to improved livelihoods of farming communities. In this regard and considering the importance of agriculture to our communities, we wish to humbly seek your intervention to;

Call for value for money audit and transparency and accountability of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) of the country’s oil money you approved for these 1V1D projects.
Summon the Special Development Initiative Secretariat and the Northern Development Authority to appear before Parliament to respond to questions on 1V1D expenditure and performance
Embark on parliamentary field trip to 1V1D project sites in some of the communities where the dams are said to be 100% complete to acquaint yourself with the realities on the ground.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, our attention has also been drawn to a recent revelation regarding the payment of US$11 million on account of works executed on the purported Pwalugu Multi-purpose Dam. We the citizens in the area have not seen any sign of development on the site. We therefore wish to equally implore you to demand explanations from the Executive on the expenditure of the said US$11 million on the Pwalugu Multi-purpose Dam. As citizens and, by extension tax payers, we own the right to information on the said expenditure, as well as the use of all public resources.  Thank you, Mr. Speaker!