It has been announced rehabilitation works would begin on the Vea and Tono Irrigation systems in the Upper East Region and that of Kpone, which stretches across the Eastern and Greater Accra regions.
The worksare scheduled to commence next month.
With human activities resulting in climate change and this change subsequently distorting temperatures and rainfall patterns in climatic zones across the globe and in particular countries, irrigation has become an alternative option to sustain agricultural production.
Therefore, rehabilitating the Veaand Tono irrigation systems is well placed as the Upper East Region falls in the northern sector of Ghana, where the climatic conditions do not allow for an all-year-round rain-fed agriculture.
The Upper East Region is said to have a unimodal rainy season, where there is only one rainfall peak with no alternation of humid and dry months within the wet season, and the region experiences this usually from April to October.
What this means is that the Upper East Region, where most of the citizens are farmers, badly needs irrigation to complement the single rainfall season to support the people’s livelihoods that are mainly farming-based or agriculturally related.
The rehabilitation of the irrigation systems is said to enable farmers in the afore-mentioned regions to easily access water for their work and this is obvious and rightly expected.
The rehabilitation concerns two systems in Upper East and one that stretches across the Greater Accra and Eastern regions but the Ghanaian Times is much more concerned about the systems in the Upper East Region because of the climatic zone Upper East falls under in the country, the savannah.
The savannah is the warmest zone and, as already mentioned, the Upper East experiences one rainy or wet season whereas the Greater Accra and Eastern regions are in southern Ghana which has two rainy seasons from March to July and during the months of September to November, with June being the month that records the highest amount of rainfall.
On that score, the Ghanaian Times wishes to appeal that particular attention must be paid to Vea and Tono so that they can have alternative source of water when their single rainy season ends.
The Ministry of Agriculture says it has commercialised the use of the irrigation schemes henceforth to help in the repayment of funds secured for the rehabilitation works.
This paper wishes to appeal that such commercialisation will not deny the people the use of the irrigation systems.
This means that it should be done such that the poor farmers could be assisted any way possible so that they would not be denied such a vital resource to enhance their farming activities.
That is to say that the charges must be moderate and where possible there must be an arrangement for farmers who cannot pay immediately to pay later.
The poverty level in the Upper East Region is very high and nothing must be done there to worsen the situation.
Even if the government would have to absorb some of the cost to bring relief to the people, this must be done and gleefully so because the suffering of any group of Ghanaians must be seen as a problem of the entire nation.
