Akosombo Dam spillage: Our fish cages have been washed away – Fish farmer laments
The ongoing Akosombo Dam spillage has left in its wake the destruction of property and the displacement of people who live close to the Volta River.
The situation is worse for fish farmers who have made the banks of the Volta River their source of livelihoods.
In a conversation with one such fish farmer, Evans Danso, he said the sudden dam spillage caught them unawares and left them with no time to save their fish farms.
Recounting his misfortune on JoyFM’s Super Morning Show, he said “It’s a complete catastrophe. We woke up in the morning and without any prior notice, the water level went up almost a meter and a half so all our cages got washed away. We lost over 2 million fingerlings and about 17 tonnes of table size fish.
“Before we could say Jack, in about an hour or so we saw other fish cages floating around from Asutsuare, Akuse, Volivo, Adidome, Bator, Mepe, and all the fish and cages were being washed away just like that. A couple of them got stuck around the lower Volta bridge and then the water went from under the bridge and got all the way to Agape area where our main production sits and there was the same thing that happened there.”
According to him, all the farms along the Volta River have been adversely affected by the sudden spillage.
“From what I understand from my colleague farmers literally every farm on the river has been washed away, and there’s nothing anybody can do,” he said.
Mr. Danso said he has no other choice than to try and save what can be salvaged and protect what has not been destroyed by the flood.
“We are trying to rescue what we can because even our breeding and nursery pond that are actually about 7 meters above the ground, above the water level is being overtaken at the moment so someway somehow, we dug a couple of years back a dam at a higher ground and so we’re moving whatever we can salvage from our breeding pond into the dam as we speak,” he said.
Source: Ghana News
