Accra floods after Nana’s visit to drains

Ghana’s capital Accra, got flooded again barely an hour after it rained.

The rains which started around 2:00pm continued till evening.

It comes barely a week after President Nana Akufo-Addo inspected progress of work on the dredging of the Odaw River and a storm drain project at Kaneshie ‘First Light’ in Accra.

Major suburbs including Kaneshie, Abossy Okai, and Awudome, were submerged after the downpour.

Accra has suffered perennial flooding for decades with various regimes apparently clueless in addressing the challenge.

Successive governments over the years, have sunk millions of cedis into the dredging and desilting of drains.

Surprisingly, the gutters have continued to be left opened, 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 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.