NPP Must Now Apologise For Bui Dam Delay - CPP

Ladies and Gentlemen, members of the media, the President of our country Mr. John Agyekum Kufuor on the 25th August cut the sod to mark the start of work on the Bui Hydro-Electric Dam Project at Bui in the Brong Ahafo Region, at an estimated cost of $622-million.

The commencement of this long overdue project is certainly very welcome by CPP members and indeed all Ghanaians because the Bui Dam Project formed part of the CPP's blueprint for the development of Ghana, and Ghanaians are aware that this is a project which should have been completed many years ago to protect their energy needs.

President Kufuor said during the sod cutting ceremony that there was a need "to look ahead to the next 30 years, to forestall the current energy shortage problems that currently confront us, and in anticipation of increased population and widespread industrialization, it is hoped that planning ahead for increased energy supply will become part of the national culture".

Energy Minister, Mr. Joseph Kofi Adda, described the Project as a 'dream that has become a reality'.
What the President and his energy minister did not tell us however is why the CPP dream has taken so long to implement, and why the NPP government had failed to plan ahead for the energy needs of Ghana.

The CPP was certainly aware of the need to plan ahead and had estimated that between 1965 and 1967 the rate of load growth for commercial, industrial, domestic and other purposes would rise by 15%per annum and between 1967 and 1977 by 11% per annum.
The CPP had thus moved to put plans in place to ensure that the development of other sources of hydro-power was implemented by 1970.

In 1965 Russian Engineers were already working on the Bui Dam project and had built Bui camp with a cluster of bungalows , a clinic, a meteorological station, an irrigated farm, hydrological measurement points, offices, and workshops with enormous collection of samples of tubular drilled rocks demonstrating CPP commitment to the next phase of meeting future power needs.
After the treason of February 1966 the Russians working on the Bui project left Ghana within a week of the coup.

During the NDC 's tenure of office an international consortium headed by Halliburton Brown & Root was in October 1999 mandated under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Government of Ghana, acting through the Volta River Authority (VRA), to develop the Bui project.
A Bui camp was again put in place, but on assuming power in January 2001, the NPP government ended the Halliburton Brown & Root consortium involvement in Bui.

Current members of this government have thus had opportunity on at least two occasions in the last 40