Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central constituency Isaac Adongo has questioned government’s commitment to the construction of the Pwalugu multipurpose dam in the Upper East region.
According to him, the inability of government to make sufficient funds available for the kick start of the actual construction of the dam is an indication that there is no commitment to ensuring that the much talked about multipurpose dam is completed.
Though President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in December 2019 cut sod for the commencement of the close to 1 billion dollar project, it has emerged that no funds have been made available to China Power, a Chinese firm executing the project to commence the actual construction.
In the 2021 budget statement presented to parliament, some 43 million Ghana cedis has been allocated for the project. A move the Bolgatanga Central MP has said demonstrates government’s lack of commitment to the project.
Speaking in an interview on The State of Our Nation on Dreamz FM, Isaac Adongo explained that a commercial agreement which was approved by parliament in 2020 did not state the source of funding for the project.
“Last year government contracted a Chinese company to construct the dam. That agreement between government of Ghana and contractor was what came to parliament. We call that a commercial agreement which is like a contract agreement for the construction of a site. The commercial agreement does not tell you how you are going to pay for the contract. So there is no loan agreement that was brought to parliament that was dedicated to fund this project. That project is a GoG funded project; in other words, this project is going to be funded like the way we have funded One Village One Dam, One District One Factory and all the toilets that are uncompleted around because there is lack of funding. This particular project has no dedicated funding” he said.
It will be recalled that Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia disclosed that government was considering the possibility of adding the cost of the construction of the dam to projects that are being executed with the $2-billion Sinodydro barter facility from China.
Speaking on Asempa FM’s Ekosiisen program Wednesday, 30th September, 2020, Dr Bawumia noted that the $ 993 million Pwalugu Multipurpose Dam is the single largest project to be undertaken by government in the whole of the Northern part of the country and the NPP government is determined to complete the project for the use of the people.
While commenting on the construction of the Tamale interchange, Dr. Bawumia said “We are looking at all that together; the barter arrangement was about $2 billion. So the first phase of sinohydro, we are using about $647 million of that $2 billion. So we have been discussing whether we should look at Pwalugu(dam) as one of the beneficiaries of this in terms of realigning it. But it is a discussion that is ongoing”.
