The Ministry of Food and Agriculture and Ghana Irrigation Development Authority (GIDA), in partnership with Jolly Homes, an estate development firm, are to redevelop the Amranhia Dam into a multipurpose functional dam.
The Dam, which takes its source from the Aburi mountains, serves as a source of irrigation for the smallholder farmers, ranchers, and the aquaculture sector in the enclave.
Due to the encroachment on the dam banks and the activities of the sand mining near the dam, it has become difficult for the dam to serve its intended purpose.
To avert further deterioration of the dam and make it useful for irrigational, aquaculture and recreational purposes, a delegation was sent by the Minister from the Ghana Irrigation Development Authority’s monitoring and evaluation team, the media and Jolly Homes to tour the dam site to assess the waning condition of the dam.
During the dam tour, the Head of Department for the Adenta Municipality of Agriculture, Rosemond Adjeoda extolled the Minister to redevelop the dam.
According to her, the dam provides clean water for both agricultural and aquaculture purposes, particularly to the vegetable farmers.
“This water is very clean, and it’s been used by the vegetable growers at this enclave. At other places, they use wastewater from places which make the food crops repugnant; however, it is incredible for the Minister to redevelop this dam for us”, she added.
She underscored the significance of the dam to the cannery factory as the only source of water the factory uses.
The Deputy Director in charge of Scheme Oversight of GIDA, Joseph Nartey, explained that the team is to monitor and evaluate the dam to complement the survey, engineering works, and designs that have been established earlier.
Giving the actual work that needs to be done at the dam site, he said, dredging the dam to restore its depth and improve water storage capacity, making it effective for irrigation, aquaculture, and recreation.
He cautioned the encroachers on the dam, especially those who had built upstream, to evacuate since the buildings would be demolished during the redevelopment of the dam.
He assured of ceasing the operations of sand winning and gravel excavators that have caused debris and mud to accumulate in the dam.
He refuted a circulated publication by some of the social media houses indicating an encroachment of the dam by an estate developer.
“From the site plan, the estate is not sitting in the dam. What we saw was that part of the estate’s land is within the catchment area and, per the agreement, is using that catchment as a swimming pool, but not to build houses”, he refuted the claim.
He commended Jolly Homes for financially supporting the redevelopment of the dam to serve irrigational, aquaculture, and recreational purposes.
Emmanuel Osei Amankra, the Operations Manager of Jolly Homes, added that the viral images shared online had been edited to create a misleading impression, inciting the homes sitting in the waterways; however, the actual condition on the ground is different.
“We all know the issues of flooding that have befallen this country, and as a result, a lot of people are agitated, including myself, because we don’t want to block waterways or whatsoever. However, people have taken advantage of this issue and misrepresented things.
Unfortunately, Jolly Homes became a victim of that. Someone took shots of this place, edited it, and posted it on social media for it to sound as if we are sitting on a waterway; that is not the issue”, he lamented.
He stated that the company has no intention of encroaching on the waterways; rather, it intends to partner with the government to redevelop the dam for the benefit of commuters.
He urged the public to debunk the misleading pictorial publication that tends to tarnish the image of the company.
As a financial partners, he said the total amount for the project and the project timeline cannot be disclosed since detailed engineering and design works are still ongoing.
