Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram Samuel Nartey George has said the spillage at the Akosombo dam which displaced a lot of Ghanaians was due to the recklessness of some individuals who chose to sleep on their jobs.
He has blamed the engineers at the Volta River Authority(VRA) for the spillage at Akosombo Dam which to date has displaced an estimated 35,857 people including children.
The MP has been telling sit-in host of Hot Issues, Alfred Ocansey that he will be petitioning Parliament to institute a bipartisan probe into what happened at Akosombo to bring perpetrators of the act to book.
“I am going to be making a formal complaint to the Speaker on the basis of this, for a bipartisan parliamentary investigation into this matter because nobody has ever put out these figure, but I’ve taken my time to get these figures to expose the facts that the engineers… and look, we’ve done spillage over the years. The engineers who have done the previous spillages, –pillage was done under professor Mills and the engineers who did that are present, they are currently there but VRA doesn’t want to talk to them because they say they are NDC people,” he alleged.
The legislator contends “human negligence led to the spillage of the Akosombo Dam and I have the evidence here to show you that the engineers at VRA, negligence on their part is what led to this whole crisis that we’re in,” he emphasised.
He went on to say, citing statistics, that it was clear a catastrophe was approaching and that these engineers at the Volta River Authority should have known.
“The rains started in the catchment area in July 2023, and the volumes received from January to June, in relation to the long term average there is something called the long term average. The long term average looks at how much water is accumulated over a 10 year period and you use that as the mean to calculate and see whether you’re going to have high levels or not,” he noted.
The lawmaker continued that “it is known that the 2023 values between January and June was five times that that of the long term average, so it was clear as early as July that we had a crisis because you had had five times the mean average”
“Now the long term average is 1.5million per meter cube of water. By June 2023, we had gotten 6.5 million cubic meter, this was clear. On the 14th of July 2023, the dam water levels crossed the lower rule of curve 276ft at a headwater elevation of 265.18 ft. A week later, on 22nd of July the 277ft rule curve was crossed at an elevation of 266.08 ft,” he explained on Hot Issues on TV3 Sunday, March 10, 2024.
Sam George explained further that “on the ninth of August the upper limit rule curve of 278 ft was crossed at a head water elevation 267.16ft. All these were clear signs as far back as July to August, clear signs that there was too much water coming into the resevoir and they needed to start spilling immediately. They waited till September 15th to start the spillage and to protect the integrity of the dam, had to spill at the volumes at which they did. Tell me this is not human negligence.”
He said these individuals ought to answer for their errors, which have seriously harmed the country.
“People should be rotting in jail by now for this kind of crime, this displaced over 16,000 people, affected 13 constituencies in this country. People are walking around for free,” he added.
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