President of the Peasant Farmers Association, Dr. Charles Nyaaba, has described contractors in charge of the government’s one village one dam policy as peasant farmers’ ‘number one enemies’.

His comment comes on the back of a JoyNews documentary, ‘Thirsty Dams’ done by Joojo Cobbinah which revealed that majority of the dams established under the one village one dam policy have failed to live up to expectation.

According to experts and stakeholders, the dams were shoddily constructed, hence, their inability to hold water for irrigation purposes.

“So it tells you that the kind of contractors that the ministry of special development initiative engaged to do the dam construction are our number one enemies,” Dr. Nyaaba said on JoyNews’ PM Express.

He stated that most dams under the policy were shoddily constructed within one week and were washed away by the rains as a result.

“I went to Saka dam and the people were telling us that when the contractor moved to site they all came, the young people stopped their work, they went there and voluntarily helped the contractor to work for free.

“So within one week when the contractor was moving out of site they thought he was going to come only for them to be called that the contractor had finished working. That dam opened after the first rain.

“There were three dams that opened after the first, second rain, the Kajoro dam you talked about, second rain came and then it went. There’s another dam Kwalungu dam in Bongo, the embankment washed off and the water run out,” he said.

Dr. Nyaaba explained that while the contractors and consultants in charge of the dam construction had been furnished with government specifications on how the dams should be constructed, the contractors had refused to follow the instructions resulting in the sub-standard dams.

“And if you look at the dam specification that they gave to the consultant, I don’t know what happened; it just met the standard dam construction.

“Each dam was to cover two hectares of land, the earth embankment wall was to have a minimum height of five metres, the depth of the dam wall was to be five metres. The length of the embankment should be between 250 to 350 metres. And then each of the embankments should be covered with rock boulders and then grasses to prevent erosion.

“But when we went to most of the dams, you’ll see that the reservoir was so shallow, there was no place they had done the layer to layer compaction because in dam construction you put a layer you compact it, you put another layer you compact it, you continue like that until you get your five metres. But in most of the cases, the contractors just excavated the soil and then heap it and left,” he said.

He added that attempts to get the ministry of special initiatives to get the contractors back on site to right their wrongs and properly complete the dams had proved futile.

“To be very frank with you, in 2020 when we engaged the ministry, according to them they were also equally very disappointed with some of the contractors and that they were bringing them back and that some of the contractors were not fully paid so they’re going to make sure that they go back and do the reconstruction of those dams that we can salvage before they pay them.  But since then nothing has happened,” he said.