When the Volta River Authority (VRA) came into existence through the promulgation of the Volta River Development Act (Act 46) of the Republic of Ghana on April 26, 1961, its core business of power generation and supply for industrial, commercial and domestic use was clearly spelt out.
Nonetheless, it had other additional responsibilities including the measurement of the environmental impact of the creation of the Volta Lake on the towns and people bordering the lake.
More importantly, the VRA had been mandated to develop the Volta Lake, which is the huge reservoir of water behind the Akosombo Dam stretching 520 kilometres between Akosombo and Yapei, its north most part mainly as a source of fishing and water transportation.
In 1970, the Volta Lake Transport Company (VLTC) was incorporated with the objective of providing safe, efficient and reliable ferry services on the lake. The idea was to facilitate the movement of passengers and industrial cargo and petroleum products from the south to the north and on their southward bound trip, bring agricultural produce from the north to the south in a cheaper and more convenient manner.
The lake which borders the Volta, Eastern, Western, Ashanti and Central regions also provides transport opportunities for farmers in the various settlements and communities along the lake who use canoes to convey their produce to market centres like Dzemeni, Kpando Torkor, Kete Krachi and Dambai in the Volta Region, Adawso in the Eastern Region and many others in the Afram Plains and parts of the Brong Ahafo and Northern regions.
The Volta Lake was also expected to be an effective link between Ghana and its landlocked neighbours like Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the transportation of cargo discharged at the Tema Port.
While the VRA has been able to serve its mandate as the nation’s main power generator, the utilisation of the Volta Lake as a major artery between the north and the south received marginal attention. The operations of the VLTC had been inconsistent, irregular and limited to a few centres and, therefore, largely inadequate to meet the needs of the hundreds of thousands of people in the over 739 communities and settlements along the Volta Lake.
The huge vacuum created under these circumstances was filled by private boat owners and operators whose activities came under very little state control or supervision. The result had been the numerous accidents witnessed on the lake either due to overloading, poor navigation skills, badly designed boats or all of these. There is also the problem of tree stumps which have impeded smooth navigation on the lake and which are sometimes the cause of the accidents.
Any time these accidents occurred, the victims were mainly women and children who were either travelling to and from the market or schools. The news of these accidents is always received with promises to make travelling on the lake safer and more reliable.
The latest of these accidents occurred at Wusuta in the Volta Region where over 20 people, mostly women and children, lost their lives. Not that nothing was being done to stem the accidents which have become regular on the lake. Since 2006, the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), in collaboration with other agencies including the VLTC and the Ghana Navy intensified efforts at implementing a number of safety measures. They included the stationing of a naval task force at six major lake stations, namely Yeji, Dzemeni, Kpando Torkor, Tapa Abotoase, Dambai and Kete Krachi to enforce safety measures including overloading, drunkenness, use of defective boats and other human abuses, among others.
Other interventions included the training of 872 operators and mechanics at the six major centres and a regular inspection of boats, especially, new entrants to mark and assign them with loadlines, while defective ones were banned from operating.
What promises to be a major boost to transportation on the Volta Lake is a new partnership between Zoil Services Limited, the Ministry of Transport, the Ghana Maritime Authority and the Ghana Navy. Under this partnership, Zoil Services, which is a subsidiary of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, will train lifeguards. These guards would patrol and monitor activities on the lake in order to reduce bad practices which result in accidents. Some of these bad practices which have been mentioned earlier include overloading, poorly- manufactured boats and lack of life jackets.
Under the project dubbed; “Promoting safe travel on the Volta Lake”, Zoil would provide 10,000 life jackets for boat operators and users in addition to the lifeguards who would be stationed at various points along the lake. According to a report dated February 22, 2010, lifeguards saved a driver and his two mates from drowning when their truck loaded with farm produce fell off the Dambai ferry into the lake.
It may not be humanly possible to eliminate accidents entirely on the Volta Lake, but with these latest interventions, it is the hope of many Ghanaians that accidents on the lake would be a thing of the past.
We also expect the government to continue to work hard to ensure that the lake provides the water transportation it was envisaged under the Volta River Development Project. Measures like removal of tree stumps and the provision of more modern and safer boats for passengers and goods would be necessary to make the lake, which has enormous potential for the country’s tourism, agricultural and commercial development, safer and attractive to more people.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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