Fisheries Minister-designate Mavis Hawa Koomson says the now-defunct Special Development Initiatives Ministry which she headed can boast of the construction of 427 dams and 42 warehouses under various projects.

Hawa Koomson made this statement during her vetting before Parliament’s Appointments Committee on Thursday, February 18, 2021.

Unfortunately, she stated that her former Ministry was unable to achieve all its planned developmental project agendas, but those that were successfully completed are being put to good use.

Explaining further, Hawa Koomson said a constraint she and her outfit faced was the issue of getting access to a site for dam construction.

Additionally, she said although government promised to construct dams under the One Village, One Dam project it was impossible to give every village a dam within four years.

“Our target was to construct 560 dams but because one constituency had no site for the dams, however, there were about 471 active sites and 427 have been fully completed.

“There are more than 5,000 villages across the Northern Region and there was no way we could finish constructing 5,000 dams in four years. We, therefore, set a target of 10 dams in each constituency”, she added.

Speaking on the subject of warehouses, the former minister stated that her outfit did considerably well by coming close to completing 42 out of the 50 warehouses government promised.

This development, she says gives her former outfit a score of 80 and 90 per cent.

“Our target was to build 50 warehouses. As I speak, 42 have been fully completed and eight others were between 80 and 90 per cent done as of October 2020 when I got a report from the consultant.

The completed ones include one in Sandema, two in Tamale and two in Techiman. Eight has also been completed in the  Western and Western North Regions.”

The construction of warehouses was part of the government’s “One District, One Warehouse” initiative under the Infrastructure for Poverty Eradication Programme (IPEP) to among other things reduce post-harvest losses.

The provision of storage was to essentially ensure a continuous flow of agriculture produce, create opportunities along the agriculture value chain and also support the implementation of government’s “Planting for Food and Jobs” initiative.