Teshie-Nungua Estates Residents Rendered Homeless After Floods
According to eyewitness reports received from interviewed residents at Teshie-Nungua estates on Sunday June 27, 2021, residents numbering into hundreds, including lactating mothers and infants, have been rendered homeless since Saturday June 26, 2021, after a rainfall of less than two hours in Accra, the capital city of Ghana.
The reports, however, so far discount the possibility of lost human lives after the floods; except reports of traumatised infants, mothers and toddlers who feared for their dear lives as the gushing rising waters carried domestic animals and pets seen floating on the water surface as the current steered them towards storm drains, which drift emptied into the Atlantic Ocean. Estimated cost of affected properties irretrievably lost to the floods, was pegged at several millions of cedis.
Books, documents and papers; beddings and mattresses; domestic electrical and electronic appliances; hanging and stashed clothes and apparels; stocked food items; parked vehicles; and even built walls separating houses, were included in the list of items and materials destroyed and the extent of damage and losses encountered after the disaster.
Eye-witness accounts further confirmed, that some NADMO officials were spotted in the community. But it could not readily be ascertained if they were staff from the local Municipal Assembly, the regional or from the national offices. Also, it was not readily verifiable if they were tasked to assess just the extent of damage recorded in the area, or in addition take record or visit all homes and families affected by the disaster. It is for certain that not all homes and families affected by the disaster were contacted, though.
Teshie-Nungua estates, in the public view, is considered as affluent and a privilleged community which houses a section of the middle and upper class of society, if compared to innercity dwellings and slums that dot the national capital. Host of Metro TV programme, Good Evening Ghana, Paul Adom Otchere, who lives upstream on the upper bank of the ridge, was marked safe. But the award winning and legend veteran boxer, DK Poison, who lives below the ridge downstream, was one of the affected victims of the disaster.
Residents interviewed concluded in a statement of one accord, accusing civil engineers responsible for the supervision of works at the ongoing reawarded Sakumono-Teshie-Nungua-Blackstar Square Beach Road reconstruction, and the contractor, for negligence. On site inspection confirmed the source of such abnormal flooding. The main culvert which serve as the drain to divert gushing water, which took its source from far afield as Aburi mountains through Madina-Adentan and at crossings on the Motorway and Spintex Road, were blocked and choked with silt used in the construction, before the rains.
Residents were also unanimous with the intention to carry out a threat to petition the Minister of Works and Housing, the Minister of Roads and Highways and the the Minister for Sanitation and copy the Office of the President of the Republic of Ghana on the matter. However, they were tight-lipped on whether it had anything to do with demands for compensation or not.
Teshie-Nungua estates forms part of State Housing projects carried out under Gen Kutu Acheampong’s National Redemption Council (and later Supreme Military Council) with the noble intentions to ease congestion and bridge the growing deficit in housing, especially in the Accra metropolis. One of such beneficiaries of the project initiatives is the late Dr Hilla Liman, who until his demise, lived and worked as a community member.
Report filed by Cadre Shmuel Ja’Mba Abm