Editorial: Taming the rain

Monday night in Accra the skies opened: thunder, lightening and all the water from heaven crashing down on our capital and flooding its streets. The skies opened, and everything ground to a halt, as they do every time it rains in this country – a little inconvenient when for several months a year we are subject to almost daily downpours.

People stay in the house until the rains are over, or remain stranded in the office, delaying meetings, work, home time to wait for the rain and the floods to desist. “Rain” is an excuse for lateness or absentia from work – within five means of a torrential storm, some roads are already almost impassable, certainly on foot if you want to get somewhere clean and dry. Deep muddy puddles which leak through your shoes, soak through your socks, seep up your trousers, leaving you damp and dirty for the rest of the day.

But how much time, how much productivity, how much potential money is lost in Ghana every time it rains? How many thousands of workers waste how many millions of hours every time the rainy season comes around – all because of the weather? And should something so predictable as rain really be allowed to bring our nation to a standstill so often? We have tamed the force of the river Volta into the Akasombo dam, yet a little rain brings us to our knees.

The rains highlight the haphazard nature of “planning” in this country – drainage routes blocked by obstructive constructions; from makeshift huts to entire houses, built in the path of where water should flow, with no one doing what they should to stop this. We talk about the need for planning in this country, and the rains illustrate this need like no other: as we pick our way through the puddles in a struggle to get to work, we see the substandard condition of too many of our roads, the inadequate drainage systems, lagging behind the building which takes place long before any facilitating infrastructure has been put in place.

The structures are in place for efficient planning in Ghana: but every time it rains we are reminded of the inefficiency of those charged with exercising them. What really to district, metro and municipal engineers do? The Statesman would like to know. Every area has one, and every assembly has its own monitoring team nominally charged with overseeing planning and development in their area. Many of these assemblies even have vehicles for the express purpose of monitoring this planning – and for those who don’t, Government ought to buy them. For planning permission, these assemblies charge a fee. But where does this go? The Statesman also asks, if not towards any appreciable improvement in planning and development and infrastructural improvements in the areas it is collected.

“Planning” in Ghana has for too long been retrospective – more sanctioning of plans which have already been executed than analysis and scrutiny of building projects before they happen. It is an unfortunate reality that, due to slow and cumbersome bureaucracy, it is often easier and cheaper to acquire “permission” for a project once it has been completed, when there is little chance of an application being rejected anyway. Another great flaw in the system is the apparent lack of local knowledge or research of those charged with planning. Not enough in-depth land surveys are carried out before a building project is sanctioned – little surprise that so many of these haphazard constructions end up blocking important water ways and adding to the inconvenience of our regular storms.

Little surprise, too, that our roads end up flooded when so many of them are unsurfaced on in dire need of resurfacing. The Government promised and is delivering on its pledge to improve the nationwide network of roads; the road from Cape Coast to Accra is nearly complete, while work on the Accra Aflao road is ongoing. However, roads within our towns and cities remain more of a problem, and it is these we find ourselves struggling to navigate on a daily basis. Pot holes become full with water; water collects in the dips on uneven surfaces; fails to drain effectively into the gutters it should. Developing a nation is a slow and arduous process, but an effective road network is the arteries and veins of that development, and The Statesman calls on Government to continue channeling more money into this cause.

Other, simple measures should similarly be taken to tame the rains: bus shelters, for example, where people can stand and wait for transport in the dry. Often times, taxis and tro-tros even stop running in the rain because passengers are so few and the roads are so bad.

Next year, thousands of visitors will descend on Ghana for our 50th birthday celebrations – half a century of independence, yet still we are subject to every whim of our master the weather. The following year, Ghana will again be flooded by visitors, from all over Africa, for the 2008 African Cup of Nations. Let us not the rains also flood the tournament, making an embarrassing wash-out of an opportunity to shine. We must tame the rain, says The Statesman; the country has achieved far more.