Most smallholder farmers in the Nabdam District have expressed gratitude to government for the implementation of its flagship program, “One-Village-One-dam” in the District.
Some smallholder farmers in some of the beneficiary communities in the Region few months ago complained that they were not satisfied with the works of some of the contractors working on the 1V1D dams.
In the Nabdam District, the story is different as most farmers expressed satisfaction with the various works done so far.
According to the farmers, for close to 20 years, they have been yearning for dams to enable them undertake dry season farming and to serve as sources of drinking water for their animals, but to no avail.
They made this known when the District Chief Executive for the area, Agnes Anamoo, accompanied by the District Engineer, Simon Akasuya, the Presiding Member Edward Dag-Bama Walla and some journalists visited the project areas to assess progress of work on the dams.
The District is expected to benefit from 10 of the earth dams projects. Currently, nine of them are being worked on by the assigned contractors.
The nine project sites visited by the Nadam DCE and her entourage included the Nyogbare, Zua, Nangodi, Zanlerigu, Daliga, Gane-Asonge, Pelingu, Sakoti and the Kotintaabig earth dams.
The smallholder farmers explained that animals such as cattle, sheep and goats which they reared to make additional income, usually travelled far distances in search of water, and in the process got stolen, which discouraged most community members from venturing into animal rearing.
“We are very grateful to the government for the provision of these dams. Even though not completed, our animals have begun drinking from it and we no longer experience too much stealing of these animals.
“We have also started fetching water from the dam to build our houses,” Ndedog Pumoro, a 58 year-old smallholder farmer from the Zua community remarked.
A 30 year old man from the Nyogbare community, Stephen Ndabon, stated that the youth in the area had resolved to exploit the water resources from the dam to do dry season farming instead of migrating to southern Ghana in search of jobs that rarely exist with their consequences.
He told the DCE that they as youth would be “knocking at your doors to solicit for support for farm inputs to enable us achieve the set objectives of going into dry season farming”.
The DCE responding to the community members said she was highly impressed about progress of work by the contractors and urged those who had minor issues on their work to do those corrections to make their work befitting ones and a learning centre for other contractors to come and study.
She pledged to support the youth in utilizing the resources from the dam for dry season farming and said the Assembly constantly monitored and supervised the contractors which led to good results, and appealed to other Assemblies to do same to help ensure that there was value for money.
GNA
