Member of Parliament for Tamale North, Alhassan Suhuyini, has called for a national developmental plan to address the issue of perennial flooding in the country.
Mr Suhuyini revealed that it is high time to resort to continuity in successive government to tackle the recurring issue of flooding in the country. He indicated that although the NPP and NDC have done their bit in contributing to improve drainage via the “implementation of by-laws such as breaking down buildings that are put in waterways”, a lot more can be done.
According to him, the strategies employed by the two political parties have not fixed the problem to the satisfaction of Ghanaians and that is why there is the need to begin to demand that more to be done.
“Clearly, if you look at the storm drains in Alajo to Nima today which has become a receptacle of vehicles these days when it rains, many of these projects were either started, continued or completed by the administration of the NDC. But we need more of such drains [and] such planning. In my view, what we really need is a national development plan that we will all agree with. Because this bits and pieces of NPP does this to deal with floods, so they do a drain to this point, NDC comes, they also take it some point or even abandon it and go and start another one is not the appropriate way to deal with this situation.”
Commenting on the extent of devastation caused by the recent floods, Mr Suhuyini expressed that unfortunately, his constituency was not also spared. He explained that any time there are heavy rains, parts of the constituency gets flooded and “so when you hear that it is raining heavily in Tamale, you’re on tenterhooks because you know that you will be the first point of call when the people are experiencing floods”.
“The solution to this is not like studying rocket science; it is basic. We have these storm drains that we have attempted to construct over the years, in fact for decades now. Successive governments come, they do a little and then they abandon it and that has been the story…”
Perennial flooding in the country is a collective shame
The Tamale North MP described the recurring problems associated with floods in the country as a “collective shame”, as governments still discuss floods and the effects of it every year. He highlighted that it looks as if Africans and for that matter Ghanaians “are blessed to their point of curse” in their inability to deal with flooding when compared to other parts of the world who have managed to deal with the impact of their weather conditions.
“I mean, I believe snow is worse than floods. Why because snow falls consistently sometimes for weeks yet people have been able to manage their communities and cities and their countries in such a way that the impact of snow on life activity and threat to life and property is that minimal. But in our case, you don’t have a situation where rain falls consistently for three or four days… It just rains for a couple of hours and every year for decades now, we count heavy losses after few hours of rain. That is something you cannot accept…”
In a bid to address the problem, Mr Suhuyini reckoned that people who are in authority must begin to solve the issue holistically and avoid the “throwing of good money” at the problem which over the years have yielded very little results.
“So, we need to begin to look at how the money that we have are thrown at this problem of floods. The minister said they have spent GHC415 million in the last couple of months or years in dealing with floods and yet people are dying [and] people are losing properties. So, it will be important to find out in which areas did we spend that GHC415 million and what benefit or impact have we gotten from that amount of money. Same can be asked of previous expenditure that we have extended in the area of managing the same situation.”
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