John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has reaffirmed his commitment to advancing the Pwalugu multipurpose dam if elected in December 2024.
The former President stated that his government would be committed to finishing the dam, adding, “It is a project that is desirable. We intend to continue.”
Speaking at a press briefing in Bolgatanga, Mr. Mahama criticized the Akufo-Addo-led government for using the wrong sources to fund the project.
He said “They said it was going to be funded from the Government of Ghana (GoG) budget and I knew that that was going to be a problem because to have almost $1 billion project funded from the GoG budget then you can be sure that it will face the hazards that every project that depends on the consolidated fund faces and that is exactly what happened”.
“Of course, it made a lot of political capital for the president’s party in cutting sod for that project…Unfortunately, we have rather lost money because almost $12 million was paid for no work done. You go to the site there is absolutely nothing there so somebody has caused financial loss to the state and must be held to account.
“We didn’t start it because we were not able to procure dedicated funding for it because for a project like that when you start, funding it must continue till its completion and so when this new government came, they took it up and in 2019 they cut sod for it,” he explained.
Work on the construction of the dam began on November 29, 2019. It received approval from Parliament in 2020 and is expected to take about fifty (50) months to complete. The 25,000-hectare irrigation scheme, when completed, will be used for various purposes including irrigation, fishing, power generation, and flood control.