Pwalugu Dam: We’ll prosecute persons responsible for $12m financial loss – Mahama

John Mahama, the flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), has pledged to hold those responsible for the financial loss of the Pwalugu Dam accountable if elected.

Mahama stated that $12 million has been spent on the project, yet no work has been completed. The Pwalugu multipurpose dam was supposed to mitigate the recurring floods in the Upper East Region by 2019, but this has not been the case.

During a media interaction in Bolgatanga on Wednesday, the NDC flagbearer committed to finishing the dam project.

“We didn’t start it because we were not able to procure dedicated funding for it because for a project like that when you start, funding it must continue till its completion and so when this new government came, they took it up and in 2019 they cut sod for it.

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.