By Mohamed Vandi
The Director of the West Africa Power Pool Project says the project is expected to start very soon and will affect some chiefdoms in the district.
Making the disclosure at a stakeholders meeting at the Kenema City Council, Milton Ngabai says the project was an initiate of ECOWAS Heads of States to ensure that all member states have the capacity to provide electricity for their citizenry and agreed to harmonize synergy to help in the power supply in the region.
He said a total of 3,408 people, 64 houses and 637 acres of land in Gofor, Combema, Tiloma, Kpava, Hangha, Ngiehun, Mano junction, Pelehun and Sembehun in the Kenema District will be affected.
He said the project was functional in the Republic of Benin and Togo and plans were in place for 224 projects to transport electricity from Togo to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Ngabai said the projects had been identified and there was money slated for their implementation adding that Sierra Leone had been lagging behind which he said necessitated a validation process. He explained that since the power line would pass through plantations and settlements, the donors contracted Korean experts on environmental impact assessment to uncover possible pitfalls and hazards in the power installation. He said that every village that lay close to the power line would enjoy the electricity supply at a cheaper rate.
He furthered that donors had put aside 110 million Euros to compensate those plantation and structure owners that would be affected. The project will start this year (2013) and is expected to be completed in 2017.
He said the main source of the hydro energy power is in Ivory Coast but that there are different sources of electricity with each country identifying its own potential sites.
