The Minority in Parliament has hinted of boycotting all activities related to the approval of the agreements for the construction of the Pwalugu Multipurpose dam.
The Minority MPs insist that the government must suspend the deal immediately.
Addressing the press on Wednesday, the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu bemoaned what he calls the “inflated and padded cost” of the project.
The caucus has been raising issues about the deal since Parliament returned from recess in January 2020.
Haruna Iddrisu said, “We are demanding that if this government believes in transparency, and value for money, they [should] make us know how the procurement process was undertaken. We are not against the people [beneficiary communities]. We are concerned about the cost of the irrigation and power facility,” he said.
He said the caucus is convinced that the contract sum the government is seeking approval for “is highly inflated.”
Haruna Iddrisu insisted that “[The current price is] three times [that of] Bui, three times best practices, three times the established figures globally, and it can only be four times padded with fraud, and we state as a Minority that we will not accept this.”
The Minority Leader then concluded that “no one should expect that the Minority will be part of any process to give approval to this because it is a complete rip-off.”
Pwalugu multipurpose dam needs no renegotiation – Majority Leader
The Majority Leader, Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu, had earlier defended the cost of the project, stressing that the Minority’s demand for a renegotiation of the deal is unnecessary.
About the dam
The Pwalugu Multipurpose project will consist of three main components, namely the construction of a hydropower plant; the construction of a solar farm; and the establishment of an irrigation scheme covering an area of some twenty-five thousand (25,000) hectares.
The Pwalugu reservoir can accommodate up to 120,000 cages of 25 square metres each of fish, with an average yield of two tons per cage, making possible the continuous development of the country’s aquaculture and fisheries sector.
The project is set to be the single, largest investment ever made by any Government in the Northern sector of the country.
The Volta River Authority says the project will commence in April 2020.
The entire project will be executed by a Chinese construction firm, Power China International and supervised by the Volta River Authority over a period of five years.
