Heavy downpour leaves Bolga flooded

Major activities have come to a standstill in Bolgatanga, Upper East regional capital, amid a heavy downpour that has left several communities flooded Wednesday.

In what started with a drizzly moment for a warning around midnight, the rain had retreated behind the heavy clouds for some hours but came back at 4:32am Wednesday, unleashing the heaviest downpour the region has seen since the start of the year.

The day has come naturally as a holiday throughout the regional capital as many, including students and workers, cannot find their way through a cloudburst that has not paused for a break since it started in the wee hours. Streets are virtually empty of people with only one or two persons shrugging off the cold either in a raincoat or under an umbrella on the shoulders of the roads as the pitch of the rain intermittently swings high and low.

The streetlights on the Bolgatanga-Tamale Highway have remained on and vehicles moving in a hurry on that stretch are flashing their headlights for fair visibility. Several workplaces are shut with no single staff found within some office blocks. Many schoolchildren are at home and the few who managed to get to school are idling in the classrooms as several teachers, locked up at home by the ceaseless downpour, are relishing a holiday that came unannounced.

Structures in flooded communities are submerged, with several acres of farmlands entombed under floodwaters everywhere. There are fears the raging deluge could leave some traces of tragedy behind as gutters across the municipality, particularly where schoolchildren might stray, are buried under tea-brown tidal waves.

CSM vaccination, voter re-registration exercise disrupted A number of significant programmes have been disrupted in the wake of the torrential rains.

A mass vaccination exercise against cerebrospinal meningitis (CSM), which was scheduled to begin Wednesday in the region for children between the ages of 1 and 4 years, hit a serious hurdle on the first day.

Teams engaged for the exercise, due to the rain, could not assemble at a point proposed for an important meeting before moving into the fields. Besides, the majority of the target group, children in crèche or kindergarten, are out of reach because of the rain.

The voter re-registration exercise, which began Monday amid low turnout in the region, also faced even a more terrible development Wednesday. Registration officials were nowhere to be found when Starr News visited some of the centres in Bolgatanga.

Some roadside food vendors have found themselves in bad business with most of their prospective customers behind closed doors and iced water merchants hardly getting a beckon or a whistle from any buyer on the sunless day.

Community members angry with contractor Some residents have blamed the floods in their communities on the lack of drains in their neighbourhoods.

A number of people at Kalbeo Tindonsolbogo Kumbangre, an electoral area in Bolgatanga where a number of schools and houses are several feet deep in floodwaters, are up in arms with a contractor for allegedly failing to provide drains along a major road under construction.

“The contractor only came to shape the road when President Mahama came to the region last week. He hasn’t provided any drains that could have directed the floods away from these portions of the community. See how every place including our school is flooded,” Josef Kris Akubah, Director of the Great Victory Academy, told Starr News.

The Municipal Chief Executive for Bolgatanga, Philip Aboore, was not available on the telephone when Starr News made efforts to reach him over the agitations of the community.

Experts fear children might get drowned The heavy shower is one of the region’s longest-running heavy downpours ever, having lasted for 10 hours so far as of the time of filing this report. Health experts have warned parents and guardians to monitor the movement of their wards so they do not get drowned.

“Children are very inquisitive. If they are not properly controlled or monitored, they could get drowned anywhere. Parents and guardians should also keep their children’s bodies warm by ensuring that they wear thick clothing,” the Upper East Regional Chairman of the Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health who is also a principal pharmacy technologist, Noble Asakeya Alagskomah, told Starr News.

Educationists have also advised parents to always monitor weather reports so as to be well informed if weather conditions are suitable enough to take their children to school. The warning comes as it is unclear yet how the children, who managed to go to school today on their own whilst the floodwaters were still low, will return home after the volumes of the wild waters have swelled up sizably.

As of the time of filing this report, it was not certain when the rain would even take a break. It was also not certain when the floodwaters would recede. What could be certain is that an arc of rainbow may crown a wet holiday that came unannounced.