Accra floods: A residential building turned into a swimming pool

Every year, people within the capital city have to deal with the perennial flooding of the city which threatens the lives of Ghanaians who live and work within the capital.

After every torrential rainfall in Accra, some people get displaced, losing everything that they have toiled for, others die just because their homes or offices or the street is flooded.

Barely after an hour of rains last Wednesday, a residence which is well fenced was turned into a swimming pool.

It is unclear where the building is situated but some of the inhabitants of this blue building were seen in a video cited by GhanaWeb, swimming in a 'dirty flood pool'.

The 17 seconds video shows a fenced blue house which is flooded by rainwater up to the window level.

Successive governments over the years have sunk millions of cedis into the dredging and desilting of drains, with the aim of finding a lasting solution to the floods but this has proven futile.

Surprisingly, the gutters within the capital have been left open, with residents treating them as dumpsites, the end result being flooding whenever there is rainfall in the city.

Government has consistently called for attitudinal change on the part of the citizenry, especially as regards to the dumping of refuse in gutters or drains.

But it appears it has not really occurred to governments over the years that if the gutters and drains are covered, citizens would not have the chance to dump refuse in them, hence there would not be the need to spend millions of cedis yearly on dredging when such funds could be channeled to other development initiatives.