Press Release
24/08/18
RE: “Boy drowns in abandoned ‘One Village, One-Dam’ project”
The attention of the Ministry of Special Development Initiatives has been drawn to a news item carried by myjoyonline.com with the above headline and published by some print media on today’s edition.
The Ministry has since dispatched a team led by the DCE to express its condolences to the bereaved family of Alhassan who sadly got drown at the project site and to also take the opportunity to assess situation on the ground and put measures in place in order to avoid future occurrences.
The Ministry would however like to provide some information to clarify some inaccurate assertions carried by the said publication.
First, the report claimed that, the said project has been abandoned, and further alleged that, the said project was only initiated to appease the President when he was visiting the area during his tour of the Northern Region.
The report continued to claim that, land for the project was taken from the community without ‘recompense’.
The Ministry clarifies as follows:
1. The project at Samni, a farming community in the East Mamprusi Municipality, is one of the 570 small dams and dugouts that are currently being constructed in fulfillment of government’s One Village, One Dam Initiative in the three (3) Northern Regions as earmarked in the 2018 budget.
The projects are currently ongoing with the exception of some few due to the setting in of the rains. That, notwithstanding, the Ministry is committed to completing all the projects initiated by the end of the year as originally scheduled.
2. The Ministry through the Northern Development Authority has a comprehensive plan in place for the implementation of this initiative. In any case, a visit to Samni project site wasn’t part of the itinary of the president’s tour of the Northern Region and as such the claim that it was only initiated to ‘appease’ the president couldn’t have been case.
3. A comprehensive needs assessment was carried out in 2017 to assess the needs of all the 275 constituencies and in all cases, it is the constituencies themselves that select projects and sites subject to appraisal before onward submission to the Ministry by the Development Authorities through the MMDAs and Members of Parliament. Hence the claim that, the community did not want a dam cannot be the case.
4. The Ministry prior to the commencement of any of its projects undertakes a comprehensive stakeholders consultation with chiefs, opinion leaders, MMDAs, etc. because the Ministry appreciates the significance of stakeholder engagement for the successes of all its programs of which the Samni project isn’t an exception.
Specifically, the Samni project went through broad stakeholders consultation with chiefs and opinion leaders of the community and the land for the project was willingly handed over to government through the District Assembly by the community themselves before the commencement of that project and we have documentary evidence to show. Therefore, the claim by the report that their lands were taken from them without recompense cannot be correct.
ISSUED BY:
PUBLIC RELATIONS UNIT, MINISTRY OF SPECIAL DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES
