RAINS EXPOSE US AGAIN (MAY 19, 2010)

LAST Monday’s rains again exposed the very ineffective drainage system in Accra that always leaves the capital city at the mercy of heavy downpours and contributes immensely to the destruction of lives.
Thankfully, this time round no lives were lost. Yet the sight of huge billboards uprooted and lying on the streets told a story alarming enough to raise some concerns.
The Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMA) has already cautioned that although the country may not record very high volumes of rainfall this year, we are likely to experience very windy conditions that can cause some disaster.
The DAILY GRAPHIC believes that the caution from the GMA speaks for itself and there is the need for Ghanaians to be cautious during such storms and avoid falling objects to prevent any disaster.
Last Monday’s rains left many places in the capital flooded and one shudders to think what will become of the city and other flood-prone areas should the country record more of such rains.
Indeed, in the recent past, city authorities, in anticipation of the potential havoc the rains could wreak, embarked on activities to de-silt choked drains.
There have also been exercises to demolish structures on water courses and although these exercises have been quite painful, they mirror the government’s determination to ensure that the perennial flooding of the city, with its related loss of lives and property, is prevented.
The DAILY GRAPHIC is worried that those interventions have not had the desired impact, if Monday’s floods are anything to go by, hence the need to intensity efforts aimed at freeing water courses to ensure a less flood-prone city.
A few years ago, a national programme was instituted to preserve some particular days for nation-wide cleaning exercises but that initiative appears to have fizzled out.
There is no doubt that at the heart of our flooding woes is the poor culture of cleanliness leading to often choked gutters and drains. That is why campaigns that mobilise the mass of the people on a regular basis for clean-up exercises need to be encouraged and sustained.
Closely linked to the issue of choked gutters is the traditional Ghanaian system of open gutters which, for many years, has defied new trends and continues to be the standard practice in the planning and design of our towns and cities.
It is also worrying to note that many developing residential areas and communities lack drains or gutters and, indeed, in some very disturbing instances, water from bathrooms and kitchens is directed onto roads, usually creating quite unsightly scenes and poor environmental conditions.
There is usually this expectation of the people that the government must provide all amenities, including drains, in their homes, but it may also be in the interest of residents to work in a united manner to ensure that as they await major interventions from the government, some more acceptable stop-gap measures or drains are built to help keep their communities safe and less susceptible to flooding during heavy downpours.
Whether we like it or not, we are all at the mercy of the weather and it behoves all of us to change our poor patterns of social behaviour so that we are not caught unawares anytime it rains.