Demolish buildings in water ways

By Benjamin Apeke
Tema, June 23, GNA - Residents of Kpone barrier in the Greater Accra Region have called on Kpone Katanmanso District Assembly to demolish all buildings sited in water courses to prevent perennial flooding.

According to them, the Assembly had slept on its responsibilities for far too long resulting in a situation where individuals take the planning laws into their hands thus holding communities to ransom.

In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Reverend Eric Addae-Bredu, Associate Pastor of the Resurrection Saints Tabernacle Church, Ashaiman and a resident, said perennial flooding in 'our cities whenever it rains is the result of poor city planning.'

'Drainage is a general problem in Ghana. Most of our roads don't have drains. Most of our drains are small,' he said.

Rev. Addae-Bredu, who also owed a restaurant in the District, opined that the size of the drains in the area were small and could not contain the volume of water that is channelled in them whenever it rained.

He also indicated that the dumping of refuse and plastic bags also went a long way to choke or narrow the channel.

The Reverend therefore called on the District Assembly to construct large drains and to enforce by-laws against the dumping of refuse in gutters.

He called on the Assembly to create awareness on the harm that indiscriminate disposal of waste could cause and provide proper dumping sites, more trucks to convey rubbish, as well as containers at vantage points within the district.

'This would prevent gutters from choking up for good drainage management,' he said.

The seriousness of the drain situation in the District was dramatized by Mr. Joseph Ofori, the Security Coordinator for Bel-Aqua, bottled Water Company sited within the flood prone area.

He said 'water filled about a quarter of my office which was terrible' adding that 'the Yummie-Noodles building adjacent Bel-Aqua's had part of its wall broken by the force of the water.

'The gutter is the problem, there is a concrete slap that causes the flowing water to overflow its bounds. The concrete slap must be broken,' he advised.

Mr. Israel Agohah, a worker in Bel-Aqua, said water filled the compound to the extent that it entered the lower parts of the trucks used to supply products of the company resulting the near wreckage of the trucks.

He said the floods tossed bicycles at the bicycle parking lot about, and 'the flower pot vendors had an unpleasant time dealing with the floods as it carried some of their pots away. You could see broken pots when you looked into the gutters.'

A bread vendor who only gave her name as Sissy said, she was fortunate not to have suffered much as the flood did not wash her stall away but sympathized with her colleagues.

She observed that the flooding was made possible because some buildings in the area were constructed in the course of water bodies.

GNA