Feo (U/R), Dec 17, GNA- The Chief and people of Feo in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region have expressed concern about delays in the rehabilitation and expansion of the community's dam that started last year.

They said the delay in the completion of the dam has brought untold hardship to them because the dam serves as the only source of drinking water for their animals, dry-season farming and for construction purposes.

The Chief of the area, Naba Azaare Anyena, expressed the concern when journalists accompanied Mr. Andrew Awuni, Deputy Minister of Information, to the area upon invitation of the chief to see the extent of work done and also find ways of addressing the issue. The rehabilitation and expansion of the dam was awarded to SAPSCO Systems, a construction firm at the cost of 418 million cedis under phase-two of the Upper East Land Conservation and Smallholder Rehabilitation Project (LACOSREP) with funding from the International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD).

Naba Anyena said since the contract was awarded last year the pace of work has consistently been slow and the contractor on two occasions had to destroy food crops only to vacate the area and resurfaced to do a minute proportion of the work.

He said the community has petitioned the District Assembly and the Regional Co-ordinating Council (RCC) but received no response to any of the petitions. He wondered what had gone wrong and appealed to the authorities concerned to ensure that the project is satisfactorily completed.

Mr Awuni assured the people that steps would be taken to ensure that the contractor returns to site and complete the work as soon as practicable. He expressed gratitude to the chief and his subjects for handling the issue with maturity.

He urged journalists to consistently monitor and highlight the activities of contractors to bring those found guilty of doing shoddy work, and those who are slow in delivering to the limelight to ensure efficiency in the execution of public contracts in the region.

When contacted, the Managing Director of SAPSCO Systems, Mr. Sunday Azure, explained that the contract was awarded in June last year but he could not move to site immediately because the rains had set in.

He said that at the same period there was an increase in petroleum prices of about a 100 per cent that invariably affected the cost of materials, labour and other equipment adding that IFAD has been consistently reluctant to pay the right price fluctuations. "Out of about four components involved in the estimation of contingencies, IFAD agreed to pay for only the periodic dollar fluctuations on the currency market, while the material and labour components which were equally affected was not paid for."

Mr Azure said the delay was also due partly to a technical hitch. He expressed regret that the work had taken too long, and appealed to the chief and his people to exercise restraint to enable him to rectify the situation, and that he would soon return to site to complete the job.