Interior Minister calls for needs assessment of flood situation

The Minister for the Interior, Mr Ambrose Dery has called on management of National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to do needs assessment of the flood situation in Monday’s heavy down pour.

He said government, together with other stakeholders, would take immediate steps and strategies to see how best to resolve the situation and address the challenges.

The Minister, together with the Minister of Defence, Police Director of Operations and the Director General of NADMO were on an assessment tour of some flood areas in the Accra Metropolis.

The visit was to enable them to see for themselves the impact of last Monday’s heavy down pour that hit most parts of the country.

The Minister and his entourage, who flew in an Aircraft to have a better view of the flood situation inspected areas like Odawna, Dome, Kissieman, Kwabenya, Madina, and Tema Community 18, 19, 20 and 25.

Mr Dery commended NADMO officers, other stakeholder and the security agencies for the efforts to salvage the situation last night in the rescue work.

Mr Eric Nana Agyeman-Prempeh, the Director-General of NADMO, said after the assessment, they would present the report to government to help victims temporary with relief items.

He said “We are coordinating all the agencies responsible for disaster management in the conduct of the needs assessment.”

He cautioned the public to be careful during the raining season, because there would be more rains.

Assistant Commissioner of Police, Dr Sayiba Gariba, the Director of Operations of the Ghana Police Service, said with the coordination of the various agencies like NADMO, 48 Regiment of the Ghana Armed Forces and others, rescue work was carried out last night.

He said going forward, “we need to plan appropriately as we go into the raining season and with inter-agency planning we can achieve more in our efforts.”

He said as a country, there was the need to do more but the coordination efforts last night between the agencies actually paid off.