The Assembly Member for the Kaleo East Electoral Area in the Nadowli-Kaleo District, Mr Fusca Ninkpeng, has appealed to the District Assembly to help the community to dredge the Kaleo dam to improve irrigation farming in the area.

He said the dam had served as a source of water for dry season farming for several years but had not been dredged for decades, thereby posing a serious risk to the livelihood of the people.

Drying up

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Kaleo, Mr Ninkpeng observed that the dam was on the verge of drying up and called for urgent steps to desilt it.

“This dam is benefiting the people a lot. For years now, they have been cultivating vegetables here in the dry season, but it is no more the Kaleo dam that we used to know, it is gradually drying up.

“The dam is very deep, but as we speak, I can walk from end to end and the water will not even reach my knee level,” he explained.

Livestock

Mr Ninkpeng also expressed fear that livestock keeping in the area would adversely be affected, if the dam was not dredged, as the animals also depended on it for water.

He said several appeals to the District Assembly to dredge it had not yielded any positive result saying, “some people also fish in the dam so if we allow it to dry up, the livelihood of so many people will be affected”.

He, however, blamed the current state of the dam on the activities of the community members who dumped refuse at the dam site and entreated them to change their attitude.

“It is our own attitude that is causing the dam to fill up, the waste materials from the community is what is filling the dam.

“Some of us have turned the dam site into a refuse dump and if we don’t stop it, we are the ones to suffer for it”, Mr Ninkpeng said. — GNA