Renowned Evangelist Dr Lawrence Tetteh was visibly close to tears recounting the hardship displaced victims of the Akosombo Dam spillage has to endure.
Despite the numerous humanitarian effort extended, the flood victims have lost a great deal of properties and livelihood including their homes, Dr Lawrence Tetteh said choking with emotions.
We are politicizing everything, people’s lives are stake, I am coming from Volta, infact we are taking food and things there but people dont have places to sleep . Children who were born that day are losing their lives and as a man God, I look at this as inhuman. This nonsense of GHC40m doesnt solve the problem. Poeple have lost everything.”
Spillage
The Volta River Authority (VRA) commenced water spillage from the Akosombo and Kpong dams on September 15, 2023, due to a consistent rise in the inflow pattern and water level of the Akosombo reservoir.
Described as a disaster mitigation plan, the spillage exercise started at a very low rate without any significant impact on the downstream communities until October 10, 2023 when six spillage gates were opened to increase the flow as water-inflow to the reservoir kept increasing and levels got close to the maximum capacity that the dam can take.
The exercise, the VRA indicated, was a crucial one aimed at protecting the dam’s integrity and technological installations.
The heightened spillage has led to an overflow of the Volta River’s banks and displacing settlements in about nine different district assemblies in the Volta and Eastern regions including North, Central and South Tongu District Assemblies, Asuogyaman, Shai Osudoku and Ada.
Almost all communities along the lower Volta Basin have been affected resulting in widespread power cuts in affected communities, submerged houses, with displaced people going hungry.
The volume of water spilled from the dams has also caused some lagoons in the Keta basin to overflow their banks, leading to flooding in some communities in the Anlo and Keta districts.
A number of notable hospitality facilities affected by the floods include Villa Cisneros, Sogakope Beach Resort and Spa, and Holy Trinity Spa and Health Farm.
At least, 25 nurses were evacuated from the nurses’ quarters at the Comboni District Hospital in Sogakope.
Background
This year’s spillage exercise is not the first time VRA is spilling water from the Akosombo Dam.
A similar exercise was carried out in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1991 with the recent one done in 2010.
They were all done to prevent water from overtopping the dam.
To mitigate the impact of such exercises, the VRA developed the Emergency Preparedness Plan (EPP).
The EPP is in three phases with phase one having water spilled very low and not exceeding 5,000 metric cubes (m3), phase two keeps spillage between 5,000 and 10,000 m3 while phase three is volume above that of the second phase.