President inspects work on Tono Irrigation Project

The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, yesterday inspected rehabilitation works on the Tono Irrigation Project in the Kassena Nankana Municipality in the Upper East Region.

The project, which is worth $30 million, has an irrigation unit that is expected to be completed in June next year, and a water treatment component that is anticipated to be finished by August 2021.

The Project Coordinator, Ms Annelies De Beule, who briefed the President and the Managing Director of the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL), Dr Clifford Braimah, said by the year 2040, about 200,000 people were estimated to benefit from the project.

According to her, the project was 30 per cent completed and currently had 20 kilometres of water transmission lines installed which would be upgraded to 100 kilometres when extra funding was secured.
 
She also said that the project would provide 20,500 cubic metres of water a day and an overhead reservoir constructed at Navrongo in the Kassena Nankana Municipality and at Zuarungu in the Bolgatanga East District. 

Durbar 

Addressing a durbar of the chiefs and people of Navrongo in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality shortly after the inspection, the President described the ongoing irrigation works at Tono as an in-depth project that would benefit farmers and the people living in the project’s catchment area. 

He said the government would complete all the nine food storage warehouses in the region. 

Smuggling

The President urged the traditional authorities in the Upper East Region to expose people who smuggled subsidised fertilisers supplied under the Planting For Food and Jobs programme to Burkina Faso.
 
“It is not tenable that we use taxpayers’ money to subsidise the price of fertiliser by 50 per cent with the aim of improving agriculture productivity only for a few greedy people to let the country down,” he said.

He observed that introduction of the Planting for Food and Jobs programme had engendered enthusiasm among farmers following which the numbers that had expressed interest in the programme had risen from an initial 200,000 nationwide to over one million currently. 

Dams

The Minister of Special Initiatives, Ms Hawa Koomson, disclosed that the government was constructing 150 dams in the region with each having a storage capacity of 30,000 cubic metres and capable of enabling farmers to cultivate crops in the dry season.

In addition, she said, the dams would be equipped with inlet and outlet valleys depending on the topography of the areas where the dams were located. 

Chiefs

In a speech read on his behalf by the Manyoro Pio, Pe Dr Pwakweah Atudipare Manchi III, the Navro Pio, Pe Dennis Aniakwa Asagpare II, called for the upgrading of the airstrip in Navrongo and for the Navrongo Prisons which was overcrowded to be decongested as well as for the Navrongo War Memorial Hospital to be well resourced.