John Dramani Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has criticized the Pwalugu multipurpose dam project, stating that it was doomed to fail.
He pointed out that $12 million was released to Chinese contractors, MS China, with no visible progress on the project.
Mahama has promised to secure dedicated funding for the project if elected president again, emphasizing that despite the $12 million expenditure, no substantial work has been accomplished.
The Pwalugu Dam project was intended to mitigate recurring floods in the Upper East Region by 2019, but this goal has not been achieved. During a media interaction in Bolgatanga on Wednesday, NDC flagbearer John Dramani Mahama pledged to complete the dam project.
He explained that the project could not proceed under the previous administration due to a lack of dedicated funding.
Mahama noted that while his government was unable to secure continuous funding at the outset, the new government took over and began the project in 2019.
They said it was going to be funded from the Government of Ghana (GoG) budget and I knew that that was going to be a problem because to have almost $1 billion project funded from the GoG budget then you can be sure that it will face the hazards that every project that depends on the consolidated fund faces and that is exactly what happened.”
“Of course, it made a lot of political capital for the president’s party in cutting sod for that project…Unfortunately, we have rather lost money because almost $12 million was paid for no work done. You go to the site there is absolutely nothing there so somebody has caused financial loss to the state and must be held to account. But it is a project that is desirable. We intend to continue,” he stated.
