The Ghana News Agency (GNA) Media and Tracking of Development project team has uncovered an abandoned irrigation dam project at Oda Nkwanta in the Birim Central Municipality of the Eastern Region.

Investigation by the team indicated that the project was part of an Inner Valley Irrigation Development Project started in 2005 by the African Development Bank aimed at facilitating the production of food crops to attain food self-sufficiency.

Speaking to the GNA team in an interview, Mr Prosper Kojo Klu, a Field Officer of the Birim Central Municipal Agriculture Department confirmed that the project had been abandoned.

He said rice had been identified in the Food and Agricultural Sector Development Policy as an important food crop that should be given special attention to for the attainment of food self-sufficiency, hence the idea to construct the dam in the area to assist more than 60 farmers who are into rice production.

Mr Klu said the project would have supported lowland rice production in the area.

He said the overall objective of the project was to improve the livelihood of farmers through the development of a sustainable economic activity based on the natural potential of the area.

Mr Klu therefore appealed to the government, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists to assist in the completion of the project.

He said farmers are not able to make maximum use of the vast land because of the absence of a dam and had to rely on rainfall, which is not reliable.

Some of the farmers who spoke to the GNA team expressed concern about the absence of a dam, which they say is making rice production in the area difficult.

They also expressed concern about their inability to get government to subsidise fertilizer for their crops.

The GNA was at the Municipality under the media auditing and tracking of development project programme funded by STAR-Ghana, a multi-donor pooled organisation.

The project aims at improving transparency and accountability of the district assemblies to people.