The Upper East Regional Directorate of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) has cautioned residents and farmers along the banks of the White Volta to move to higher grounds, as the annual spillage of the Bagre Dam from neighboring Burkina Faso could commence this Friday, August 27, till Monday, August 30.
The spillage has been done annually by the Burkinabe power company Société Nationale Burkinabe d’Electricité (SONABEL) since 1999, eight years after it constructed the dam on the White Volta sub-basin in Burkina Faso.
When it happens, communities in Ghana downstream of the White Volta River experience flood disasters involving the destruction of houses belonging to individuals or families, public infrastructure and farmlands; and loss of human lives, poultry and livestock, as well as cash and personal belongings.
The spillage is said to cause massive flooding in communities in the northern regions of Ghana, where livelihoods are destroyed.
It is a pity talking even only about the lives lost to the spillage in recent times. On September 3, 2018, it claimed 34 lives, 15 in 2019 and in 2020 six.
It was in the news in 2015 that the Ghanaian authorities complained that Burkina Faso, as in previous years, gave them short notice of the spillage which did not allow the Ghanaians to give enough education to people living along the banks of the White Volta to take precaution.
Ghana even wanted to invoke riparian legal instruments in addition to getting the guidance of the international community, including the United Nations, “for peaceful and binding resolution that would hold Burkina Faso accountable for its damaging and unilateral actions.”
The Ghanaian Times believes that the situation is different today once SONABEL has given Ghana prior notice.
However, the paper is worried that since 1999, the story of the Bagre dam spillage and the associated devastation has not changed. What is Ghana doing about the situation?
The communities usually affected by the spillage constitute an important food basket whose devastation undermines the food security of the whole country because a lot of yams, legumes, grains, including rice and maize, poultry and livestock like goats and sheep come from the northern regions of the country, including Upper East and Upper West.
Besides, once livelihoods are destroyed, unemployment increases and the corollary is anyone’s guess. For example, the already biting poverty in the area worsens and once that happens, it aggravates the suffering of the people.
The state has to do more than the one-off donations of food and other items NADMO gives to the people.
Can the state not, for example, build some dams along the line to collect some of the water from the spillage to assuage the devastation?
Even though we have one country called Ghana in which life is not as comfortable as everyone would have wished to have it, our brothers and sisters in the north suffer most and so they need special attention.
That attention includes fixing the flooding associated with the spillage of the Bagre Dam to save life, property and livelihoods, as well as cash at home.
