Sierra Leone President Ernest Koroma said Wednesday the country's huge Bumbuna hydroelectric project is expected to be completed in the coming months in the electricity-starved nation.
The huge dam in northern Sierra Leone is due to supply electricity to 75 percent of the country.
Koroma told state radio and television that the overall completion of the project, initially scheduled this month, "would have to wait for the rains to come to fill the reservoir to its operating level for the turbines to work effectively". Rains are expected in June or July.
The vast majority of Sierra Leoneans have no access to electricity and those that do still suffer frequent blackouts because of unstable power supplies.
According to the World Bank, the energy situation in the west African country is "a serious impediment to Sierra Leone's economic growth".
The country is struggling to recover from a devastating decade-long civil war that left some 120,000 people dead at its end in 2001.
Koroma warned that vandalism was threatening the completion of the project.
On Wednesday the government deployed hundreds of heavily armed soldiers to guard the structure's key power lines and electrical installation towers on the 250 kilometers (155 miles) of roads between Bumbuna and Freetown.
"Government is spending 10 million dollars (7.6 million euros) to rehabilitate the transmission lines because they were vandalised by unscrupulous individuals. Conductors and tower materials were being used to make cooking pots or sold off as scrap metals," he said.
The Bumbuna project has been in the works for 25 years and, according to the Sierra Leone authorities, has cost over 300 million dollars in all.
It was built with aid from the World Bank, the African Development Bank and Italy and Japan.
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