Residents along the Weija dam catchment area have been warned by the Ghana water Company Limited (GWCL) to move to safer grounds as more water will be spilled from the dam. The company also says it will not compensate anybody whose property gets destroyed by the spillage.
According to Head of Communications at GWCL, Stanley Martey, the decision to open the floodgates of the dam was as a result of the rise in the water level, which, if not spilled, would pose a threat to the facility.
Speaking to Class News, Mr Martey said the assemblies should be up and doing to prevent people from building along the dam’s catchment areas.
“We have been spilling for the past three weeks and the levels keep rising so it is affecting those people downstream beyond the dam because we have opened four gates and two of them are two feet in terms of height and the other two, one foot each. Our investigations or our checks indicate that there is more water flowing downstream; it means that we will continue spilling and people have built in the waterway so it is affecting them”, he stated.
“Now we want to use this opportunity to tell them that they need to evacuate the place and people should stop building in waterways and people should stop building in buffer zones and then the municipal and district assemblies should be up and doing”, Mr Martey added.
He cautioned that GWCL would not provide any form of compensation to anyone whose property will be destroyed in the spillage. “It is not our duty to compensate anybody. Beyond the reservoir, it has nothing to do with us. It is the municipal assembly…we are only concerned because of the situation at hand, but it is not within our remit to compensate anybody because there is a river and a buffer zone, if you build in a buffer zone, why do you want us to compensate you?” Mr Martey asked.
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