VRA sensitises Osudoku communities to future spillage
THE Volta River Authority (VRA), as part of its Emergency Preparedness Plan (EPP), in collaboration with the Shai-Osudoku District Assembly in the Greater Accra Region, last Monday organised a community sensitisation engagement for the people of Asutuare and its adjoining communities which were affected by the recent dam spillage.
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The communities that attended the programme were Natriku, Dormeliam, Kadjanya, Asutsuare, Osuwem, Tokpo, Agbekotsekpo, Huapa and Djorkpo among others.
The programme was part of VRA’s stakeholder engagement meeting on possible precautionary spillage of water from the Akosombo Dam this year.
Spillage
The VRA Manager in charge of Community Relations, Samuel Fletcher, told the communities that it was one of the mandates of the authority to yearly sensitise people along the Lower
Volta Basin in relation to possible spillages if need be.
He said it was possible there might be spillage this year too and there was the need to get them informed in case it happened, in order for the communities to be aware and prepare towards it.
However, he said if the spillage might even be necessary this year, it might not be as serious as that of last year’s which seriously affected a lot of the communities along the lower Volta Basin.
The VRA in its presentation by an engineer with the water resources and renewable energy department, Akosua Owusu-Efaa, attributed some of the effects of the spillage last year to
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the location of some of the affected communities within a certain close distance from the Volta River and flood-prone areas.
The Head of the Shai-Osudoku District National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Nana Asante Boateng, said 15 communities including Abuvienu, Djokpo, Walekukope, Tsikpoteyekope, Asilevikope, Tokpo and Adakope were seriously affected by last year’s spillage, which caused extensive damage to households and rendered many individuals homeless.
Irrigation dams
Mr Boateng suggested that to mitigate the impact of future spillage, there was the need for VRA to create irrigation dams or water reservoirs to harvest excess water for farming purposes.
He also called for the VRA to create an emergency disaster fund to rapidly respond to disaster needs going forward, to mitigate the suffering the affected communities went through during last year’s spillage.
The Director of Environment and Sustainable Development of VRA, Benjamin Sackey, lauded NADMO for its support in achieving results during last year’s spillage and gave an assurance that NADMO’s contingency plan for VRA at the programme would be tested in its future preparations towards spillages.
Infrastructure needs
In response to questions asked by some community members, he said: “VRA is not responsible for infrastructure that is close to the Lower Volta Basin.
In the same way, those who are doing business near the river, he said, were at risk and that such people must be handled by the assemblies in case of any disaster, because the regulations not to build close to the Volta Lake lie with the assemblies and not VRA,” Mr Sackey said.
He also said one of the challenges of VRA with regard to spillage and destruction of properties in the Asutsuare area in particular was about the sand winners in the Volta River.
He explained that the sand winners in the Asutsuare area normally winned the sand anyhow and that made the water change its course or direction, which eventually affected the communities in the areas during spillage.
The Presiding Member for the Shai-Osudoku District Assembly, Noah Sabutey, who represented the District Chief Executive, gave an assurance that the assembly in collaboration with NADMO was going to handle issues of building closer to the Volta River and sand winning in the district in order to put a stop to it, adding “we shall use the assembly’s development task force to give them education and when that fails then there will be action.”
The Chief of Tsangmer Osudoku and the acting Chief of Asutsuare, Nene Narh Guamatsu IV, who chaired the programme, emphasised that the Osudoku Traditional Authority was not happy about what happened last year as the communities were not well engaged in order to get them prepared psychologically.
He was therefore grateful to the VRA for the engagement, which he said would go a long way to get the communities prepared should the spillage be done again this year.
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