The next government of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), will ensure the prosecution of officials of the current New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration for causing financial loss to the state over one of its flagship programmes, the One Village One Dam Project.
This was disclosed by the National Communications Officer of the party, Sammy Gyamfi, at a press conference at Nakpachie in the Northern Region of Ghana.
The press conference, which was held in one of the dried up dams at Nakpachie revealed of the seeming lack of proper feasibility studies for value for money, the NDC said.
According to the NDC’s Communications Officer, Mr Sammy Gyamfi, the One Village, One Dam promise is a trojan gift, deceptive in appearance, and insincerely packaged to hoodwink the good people of Northern Ghana, for their votes, adding that, the shoddy execution of these 1V1D projects has amply vindicated the National Democratic Congress’ long-held position that, the whole talk about 1V1D by the then Candidate Akufo-Addo, was a ruse meant for electoral gain and nothing more.
He has therefore assured the prosecution of Mavis Hawa Koomson, the Minister of Special Initiative and her superiors, for causing financial loss to the state as far as the one village-one dam (1V1D) programme is concerned.
In his own words, Mr Gyamfi stated that, “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”.
Punching more holes into the New Patriotic Party’s programme, Mr Sammy Gyamfi continued that, “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 tea spoon of water, is what this government has been bragging about…….that should let you know how dishonest, how deceptive and how wicked this government is” , Mr Gyamfi told journalists at the press conference yesterday.
According to him, the government constructed the dams, knowing very well that, they were not doing any meaningful thing that can stand the test of time.
He revealed at the press conference that, since November 2019, when the rainy season had barely ended in the northern part of Ghana, the majority of the “excavated ponds” began to dry up and had no water for consumption for even live-stocks let alone for farming activities.
He therefore made it clear that, it would have been more prudent and judicious use of the taxpayers’ money, if the government had channelled the resources wasted on the said “sub-standard excavated ponds and dugouts” which have dried up, on proper small scale-scale irrigation dams like the ones done by the John Dramani Mahama-led administration., such as the ones being currently constructed by JICA in some parts of the country.
He suggested that, what any sensitive government would have done, would have been to aggregate the resources used in constructing what he described as excavated dug-outs for a rather meaningful and well planned dams fit for purpose than to invest in excavated ponds, which dry up in a matter of months.
Sammy Gyamfi again served notice that, the appointees of President Akufo-Addo, who are in charge of what he described as “scams” such as the 1V1D and others, will not be spared prosecution by the next National Democratic Congress government.
“It is our contention that, the one village-one dam programme, like similar tokenisms being championed by this government, constitutes a huge financial loss to the state,” Sammy Gyamfi said.
He reminded that, 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, a future government of the NDC shall investigate and prosecute all persons associated with such deceptive schemes.
“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 finally warned.
Source: Selorm Kofi Adzivor II The New Independent Newspaper