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It rained again and Accra was
flooded. Parts of the city not counted among flood-prone areas came under
rainwater.

Although there were no
casualties as in previous deluges, there was marked destruction of property and
anguish.  

Over the years, we have failed
to address this perennial trend which now comes with casualties, for which
reason the subject has become an annual subject of public discourse.

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Such discourses have not led to
any phenomenal engineering breakthrough in the area of addressing the
challenge.

Announcements about plans to
reverse the trend whenever the floods descend upon us only attract wry smiles. The
management of the floods has unfortunately become a means of gauging the
seriousness of government appointees.

We have complained over the
years about the annual rituals of visiting flood affected areas soon after
deluges when indeed nothing is done to address the recurring situation in
subsequent years.

It is disturbing when the
causes of floods are attributable to both residents of the nation’s capital,
managers of the city and even policymakers.

Our open gutters are part of
the problem yet this is hardly considered when floods are discussed especially
how to address them by both experts and members of the public. As for the poor
engineering work by contractors nobody mentions them. The hiccups at the Circle
project and which contribute to the perennial flooding at the location has
never made it to the front-burners and so such bad contractors get away with their
shoddy jobs leaving otherwise glittering roads prone to perennial floods.  

A whopping amount of money was
reportedly earmarked for addressing the perennial flooding of Accra. Indeed,
the fanfare which accompanied the announced convinced most residents that now
the problem has received effective attention from the appropriate quarters and
flooding confined to the chapters of our civil engineering history.

City dwellers are beginning to
lose hope that something is coming their way in the form of reversing the nasty
floods and this is affecting the confidence of the people and those in charge
of managing our national capital.

Residents too must be made to
understand that they too are contributory factors for the perennial
inconvenience of floods and even casualties. Dumping plastic products into the
drainage system which after all is not in the best of shapes is something all
of us must join hands in stemming.

We are unable to enforce by-laws
which can deter                                               
      city dwellers from
continuing their bad practices of choking the gutters with their bad ways.

With more rains predicted, we
do no not know whether the worst is over but the fact remains that only a
revolutionary approach to addressing the perennial flooding can get us out of
the wet doldrums.

With the President taking a
trip to the site of the dredging works ongoing on the Odaw River near Circle
yesterday, perhaps that could push the relevant appointees to wake up and do
something about the dangerous situation staring us in the face.  

The post Floods Again: No Solution Yet? appeared first on DailyGuide Network.

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