By Emmanuel Chilemba:
First phase of construction of the Shire Valley Transformation Programme is facing an estimated $197 million (about K344 billion) deficit, with its completion deadline shifted to May next year.
Shire Valley Transformation Programme Coordinator Limbani Gomani said this when members of the Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture toured the project site in Chikwawa District.
Gomani cited change of design and weather-related challenges among factors affecting the work.
“We have raised concerns to the government and financiers that the programme needs additional financial resources to finish the remaining works before water can even flow,” Gomani said.
He said the project will start to benefit surrounding communities in May next year after finalization of the temporary intake.
Initially, the completion of the temporary intake was estimated to be completed in this month of October this year.
Parliamentary Committee on Agriculture vice chairperson Chikondi Kampachike Chisale, said was impressed with the progress of the project.
He reaffirmed the committee’s commitment to lobby for financial support.
“We will push Parliament and the Ministry of Finance. We have also recommended a Build, Operate and Transfer arrangement because it brings on board professional investors who can come in to do things faster and efficiently, finish everything and start using it, and then we pay back their money with interest over an agreed period,” he added.
In a recent interview, Kambadwe Cooperative member Namasito Kamtsokota described the country’s irrigation flagship project as a game changer that will shift farmers from rainfed subsistence farming to commercial irrigated agriculture.
The SVTP aims to irrigate 43,370 hectares of land in the Lower Shire districts by abstracting water from the Shire River at Kapichira and conveying it through gravity-fed canals to irrigable areas.
It is being implemented by the government with financial support from the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
The project would benefit farming households around the canal, including the Kambadwe and Mwanaalilenji cooperatives, that are hoping to shift from subsistence, drought-prone smallholder farming to irrigated, all-year-round commercial farming.