Multipurpose Tono Irrigation project to be completed next year
The rehabilitation of the $30 million multipurpose Tono Irrigation project in the Kassena-Nankana Municipality of the Upper East Region, is expected to be completed in June 2020 while the Water treatment plant, a component of the project would be completed in 2021.
This was disclosed by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo when he toured the facility as part of his two-day working visit to the region.
The project, which is being funded by the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), was awarded to Top International Engineering Cooperation, (TIEC), a Chinese construction firm last year.
President Nana Akufo-Addo said the facility, upon completion, would not only help the water treatment plant to provide water for the population of the region, but would also enable farmers in the area to do all year round farming.
While tasking the contractor to ensure quality work, he said, the project would ensure that more farmers would be enrolled onto the government’s flagship programme of ‘Planting for Food and Jobs.’
The President said government, through the Ministry of Special Development Initiative and the Ministry of Agriculture, was also constructing a number of warehouses across the region to help address the problems associated with post-harvest losses.
Ms Annelies De Beule, the Project Coordinator of TIEC, who briefed the president on the progress of work, said about 30 per cent of work on the water treatment project had been completed.
The Tono Irrigation project, which was constructed in 1985 to promote agriculture production in the Navrongo area, had not seen a major rehabilitation, making the facility to operate below capacity.
The facility could irrigate an area of about 4,000 hectares of farmlands, however, as a result of the breakdown of the major canals and laterals that carry water from the dam to farmlands, only 1,300 hectares of farmlands are being irrigated.
The project when completed, would boost agriculture production in the Kassena-Nankana and Builsa communities and is expected to feed the new water treatment plant under construction at Tono to supply treated water to Navrongo, Paga, Zuarungu, Bolgatanga and their environs by the Ghana Water Company Limited.
Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, the Minister of Agriculture, who was with the president said, the project when completed, would not only double the number of farmers currently working in the area, but would also empower the youth and women groups in the area with jobs and increase their income generation activities.
He said government was working hard to procure farm implements and equipment including tractors and combined harvesters among other Agriculture machinery, to help boost agriculture production for food sufficiency as well as for export.
Pe Denis Aniakwa Beliana Asagpare Adda II, the Paramount Chief of the Navrongo Traditional area, appealed to the President, to as matter of urgency, approve the rehabilitation of the Navrongo-Kologu-Naaga road, to boost the economic prospects of the area and improve the standard of living of the poor rural communities.
Source: GNA