"ONE VILLAGE ONE DAM" PROGRAMME HAS NOT FAILED- BRYAN ACHAMPONG

Minister of Food and Agriculture Bryan Acheampong has refuted claims that the One Village One Dam program under the Akufo Addo government has failed. The Minister explained that the intention for creating the dams was to collect and store water for later use, which he says, has been fulfilled. The NPP government and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture have been heavily criticised over what has been described as a failure of the government’s flagship programs, Planting for Food and Jobs and one village one dam. These criticisms have been given some merits 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. In the view of many Ghanaians, with over GHS 3 billion spent on the two programs ((PFJ: GHS2.9billion from 2017 to 2023, 1V1D: 574 dams at a cost of GHS250,000 each), the current situation should not be the case. However, Hon. Bryan Acheampong refuted these claims and insisted that the dams have fully served their intended purpose. The Minister put up this defense in an interview with 3 Business' Paa Kwesi Asare on Business Focus. “There is a big difference between an irrigation scheme and a dam. A dam holds water. 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. “Now the rains there are very heavy within a very short period and when it rains, the water just runs off. So, the idea was that then let’s build these dugouts to hold the rainwater. So, we have done 574 or so of them and that has served the purpose very well in terms of holding the rainwater, in this case, there were no rains to be able to fill the dams so that the farmers will use.” Hon Bryan Acheampong added. The Minister added that the dams were very useful last year when the country had more rain leading to a bumper harvest. Story By: Collins Boateng (Cabman) for VOV News