A Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr Sagre Bambangi has clarified that government’s flagship programme, “One Village, One dam” does not necessarily mean that every village in the three regions of the north will have a dam of their own.
According to him, the policy will cover only communities that have the “potential to have viable dams.”
“When we say One Village, One Dam, it does not necessarily mean that every community will have one dam,” he said.
“It is to indicate that every village must have access to dam water to cultivate crops,” he added.
Dr Bambangi made this known in Parliament in Accra yesterday while interacting with journalists.
The promise to construct a dam in every village of the three regions of the north featured prominently in the 2016 polls which culminated in a resounding victory for the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
He said as a government committed to revamping the agriculture sector, the plan is to feed communities which may not have any source of water in their locality with irrigation facility.
To have communities without water beds connected with irrigation facilities, the Walewale lawmaker said “is envisaged in our long term plan for agriculture.”
The ministry, he said, would be having a consultative meeting “very soon” (before the budget reading in November) on the transformational plan to have a marshall document for the agriculture sector.
Asked when the construction of the dams will commence, Dr Bambangi said the next dry season, being December, for the start of the construction of the dams and irrigation facilities.
The next dry season because “dams are better constructed during the dry season and because it is still raining, we have to be looking at the end of the year into the next year,” he explained.
Dr Bambangi said funds for the execution of the programme will be catered for in the next budget, disclosing that engineers have already been dispatched to the communities to do an assessment for the take-off.
He said all beneficiary communities may not have a large scale dam and that it will be based on the advice of the technical team and should they say a particular community deserves a dug-out or a dam “so be it.”
A lot of things, he said, are taken into consideration when constructing a dam and that is what the government, based on the advice of the technical team, would be applying.
He assured that the government would not renege on its campaign promise to make the agriculture` sector a viable sector again and give meaning to the saying that the sector is the back bone of the Ghanaian economy.