The World Food Programme (WFP), under the Asset Creation Programme, has paid cash compensation to 1,689 households in eight communities in the North Gonja District, for helping to build dams to improve their livelihoods.
Each household in the communities, including Kagbal, Bawena, Kuportor, Daresalam, Lingbinsi, Gou, Sinesinel and Gbanjula, received between GHc130 and GHc160, bringing the total amount to over GHc270,000.
WFP, under the Asset Creation Programme, worked with the Department of Agriculture in the North Gonja District, and mobilized community members to rebuild their damaged dams and dug-outs, with the aim to improve community livelihoods, promote food security and strengthen communities’ resilience to climate shocks.
Under the Asset Creation Programme, 26 dams have so far been re-constructed, or nearing completion, in the Central Gonja, East Gonja and the North Gonja Districts.
The Asset Creation Programme emerged from the Food for Assets initiative, which WFP started in 2010, in response to a phase of droughts, floods and high food prices in northern Ghana.
Madam Vera Boohene, Communications Officer of WFP, who spoke to journalists at Kagbal on Tuesday, as part of her tour of the communities to witness the payment of cash compensation to community members, said the households invested the money in their various economic activities, including agricultural production.
Madam Boohene said the dams also served as sources of water for members of the communities to undertake their household chores, as well as farming activities, during the dry season.
She urged the beneficiary communities to maintain the dams to ensure sustainability.
Mr Adams Abdul-Hamid, Deputy Director of the Department of Agriculture in the North Gonja District, said members of the communities engaged in dry season vegetable farming, and therefore, depended on the dams for water to irrigate their farms.
Mr Abdul-Hamid said the dams also helped to ensure that women did not travel long distances in search of water.
Source: GNA
