Vea Dam Needs Immediate Attention Farmers Appealed - UER

An appeal has been made to the Government to as a matter of urgency, to de-silt the left and right banks canals  of the Vea Irrigation Dam, as a stop-gap measure to enable farmers crop for this coming dry season farming which begins this August. 

The appeal was made by the farmers in Vea when Radio Ghana undertook separate visits to the project communities to ascertain the deplorable nature of the irrigation facility.  

More than  3,000   farmers of the Vea Irrigation facility  in the Upper East Region have been thrown out of business as a result of the broken down and the siltation  nature  of the left and right banks  canals and laterals  that transport water from the reservoir for irrigation farming. 

Eleven communities namely Vea, Nyariga, Bongo, Bolgatanga, Zaare, Dindubisi, Yikine, Gowrie, Yorogo,  Yorogo-Gabisi and Sumbrungu  including  other people outside the areas used to  rely on the facility  for farming particularly during  the dry seasons to make a living but could not do so now due to the  deplorable state of the facility. 

When Radio Ghana visited the project sites it was realized that a considerable number of the canals and laterals that convey water from the dam to the farms have all virtually broken down and engulfed with weeds. 

It will be recalled that since the construction of the Vea Irrigation Dam in the 1960s, it had never seen any major rehabilitation. 

This has resulted to the farmers’ inability to access water to irrigate their farms   forcing majority of them   to abandon their farms. 

The Irrigation area is zoned into low lands for rice farming and uplands for tomato farming, soya beans, cabbage, lettuce and pepper and other vegetables. 

The farmers also used to grow millet and groundnuts including sorghum which is now in high demand for the brewing industries. 

The facility also has fish ponds.  Most of the farmers who are   widows and the youth blamed the past and present governments for failing to rehabilitate the facility and stressed that the facility which was constructed by the first President of the republic of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah is one of the major livelihoods of the people in the area and beyond and wondered why such an asset was left unattended to since its establishment. 

The focal person of the Peasant Farmers Association in charge of the Upper East Region, Mr John Akaribo, said government’s policies of the Planting for food and Jobs PFJs and One District one Factory stand to receive a major boost if the Vea Irrigation project is revamped.

Story by: GBC's Emmanuel Akayeti