Tana farmers push for completion of Bura Canal project
Ongoing construction at the Bura Gravity Canal Project at Korakora village in Tana River County. Farmers want the government to prioritise its completion to ease the cost of irrigation.
Farmers in Tana River County want the government to prioritise completing the Bura Gravity Canal Project to ease the cost of irrigation.
They said the Sh7.3 billion project meant to reduce the cost of production has stalled since the groundbreaking in 2013.
"It was set to be finished in two years but nine years down the line, there is nothing to show for it, apart from different faces of contractors," said Ibrahim Wayu.
Mr Wayu noted that the high cost of pumping water has hampered reliable supply of water in the Bura Irrigation Scheme.
With the rising cost of fuel, he said, the cost of pumping water had risen, and managers in the scheme had initiated a dialogue with farmers on costs.
"The managers are facing it rough. They have to share the burden with the farmers, who are not willing to take part. At the end of the day, the Bura Irrigation Scheme will collapse, it is already overwhelmed," he said.
The farmers also said the scheme management sometimes rations water to farms to keep their costs down.
As a result, parts of the farm miss water, affecting crops.
"Two months ago, we had a water crisis in the rice fields. It affected productivity in the long run, and that is because the water in the river was low and the generators could not supply," said James Macharia, a farmer.
When water levels fall in the River Tana, he said, generators break down as the pumps suck in mud, raising repair and maintenance costs.
"The project can't continue at this pace. Time is not on our side. If they mean to upscale production in the Bura farm, we need this project finished," he said.
The Bura scheme uses diesel generators to pump water to more than 12,000 acres of the farm.
Reports from the National Irrigation Authority show that the scheme has four pumps, each with a discharge capacity of 2.7 cubic metres per second.
The pumps are powered by four generators, three of which produces 600 kilovolt-ampere (KVA) and one with 505KVA prime power.
The report notes that on average, the generators consume 75 litres of diesel per hour.
The multibillion-shilling project, touted as the solution to the high cost of irrigation in the Bura scheme, was scheduled for completion by September 2015 and is now in its 10th year with barely 60 percent of the work done.
But the project is within its completion time frame, said Loise Kahiga, the chief engineer for planning and design at the National Irrigation Authority.
The challenges related to contractors, she said, had been resolved and work on the canal would be completed by this month.
