The Rains Are Here Again,
MOURNING IS HERE AGAIN!
I watched for the first time in 2008 ‘Sometime in April,’ a movie about the Rwandan genocide. The first scene presented the key character, teaching in one of the junior schools that had survived the war. And then it began to rain! The rains then reminded him that it was April, the same period in 1994, a black year in their history, when the most dreadful genocide that claimed about 1,000,000 lives just within 100 days took place. April commences the rainy season in that country I presume.
In Ghana, rains are very important to the farming community. This is because, as a nation and, characteristic of most developing countries, we have not been able to develop enough irrigation infrastructures, making us rely heavily on rainfalls to water our farms. The inception of every rainy season therefore is supposed to bring relief and happiness to the country, especially the farming communities. In a good rainy season, the country usually records bumper harvests which, all things being equal, lead to lower prices of agricultural commodities. In fact, the inflationary trends of our economy rely heavily on the agricultural food component of the consumer price index.
Unfortunately, over some decades now, the rainy season has brought nothing but pain and grief to most Ghanaians, especially those in Accra and some other urban communities. Consistently over the period, deaths have been recorded every year as a result of flooding.
In the infamous Sunday 20th June 2010 rains, about 35 persons were reported to have died across the country from flooding, the worst hit being Ashaiman, where as many as 16 persons, including children, lost their lives - something that had stricken most families with grief ever since. This flooding was said to be the worst flooding catastrophe in a decade. Similarly, a 27th June 2009 edition of the Daily Graphic reported seven deaths from the 2009 flooding. Furthermore, a 21st October 2010 edition of the Daily Graphic carried the headline: “Rains cause havoc at Dansoman, elsewhere.” After only two major downpours in Accra, the month of February 2011 ended with the old ritual of flooding. There have already been several reports in the media on flooding across many locations in the Capital City and Kumasi this year.
Just when everybody thought the rains was giving way for the harmatan season, a heaviest downpour was recorded and like a thief in the night, Accra and its immediate environs woke up on 26th November 2011 to a very devastating flood that turned a better part of these locations into temporary lakes. Monitoring events on the airwaves revealed the seriousness of the phenomenon. I heard one victim exclaim: “I have never seen such [flooding] in my life ever since I came to Kasoa.” Mr. Kofi Potofi, the boss of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) was also heard on the radio indicating that “We haven’t seen this high levels of flooding in Accra the way we are seeing it.” Meanwhile, five persons were reported to have died due to the floods, some through very unfortunate circumstances. Additionally, most of the leading automobile companies on the Graphic Road have not finished counting their losses as the floods invaded their show houses, spoiling engines of most of their brand new cars and that of their clients.
Besides the number of deaths, properties running into several millions of Ghana cedis are usually lost to these floods whilst most of the flooding victims become either displaced or permanently homeless. For example, devastation in Swedru in 2010 had been so severe that inhabitants in this Township called on the president, John E. A. Mills, to declare “a state of emergency” on the municipality. Up till today, most of these victims have not been able to recover from the catastrophe. In fact, many of them are still benefiting from a government’s Emergency Livelihood support of Fifteen Ghana Cedis a month. Apart from the loss usually incurred by the victims of such flooding incidents, the central government, through the NADMO, spends several hundreds of thousands of Ghana cedis on the provision of relief support.The loss of lives and property to flooding every year generate lots of public discourses and commentaries. Sometimes these commentaries produce very good recommendations and suggestions which, regrettably, are never seen to be considered by those responsible for decision making.
Flooding imposes precarious security threats to our citizenry. In most modern democracies, threats against national security are seen to emanate less from external aggression, but rather from natural and environmental catastrophes such as flooding, tsunamis, earthquakes, desertification and global warming. That is why militarization of the environment is gradually becoming an important concept for most of these democracies. Most flooding in Ghana, instead of primarily resulting from purely natural circumstances, emanate rather from man-made conditions: poor human settlement planning and management; and actions and in-actions of people in decision-making positions. For us to prevent this annual ritual of flooding, we need to among other things, give serious consideration to the various proposals that are made during discussions around the subject. I hereby present these few suggestions as a way of contributing to the recurring annual discussions on the flooding phenomenon:
a) The state should ban the sale of un-serviced plots of land. It is now clear that the state does not have the capacity to act ahead of the rate of urbanization. Our settlements therefore evolve spontaneously as well as haphazardly – roads are not constructed and there are neither no clear drainage designs nor their construction. To solve this problem, the state should ensure that parcels of land are not sold until they are serviced: connection to water, electricity and construction of drains and roads. It will be advisable to put such a policy within a legal framework. Legal modalities should therefore be considered in this direction. The advantage to government is that it will ease the amount of government investment in infrastructural development. I don’t mean to suggest that the state should shift all the burden of infrastructural development on private individuals. I, however, believe that owners of large tracts of land could be made to service these parcels of land with support from the MMDAs or Central government before they are sold out. Some private companies have already taken the lead in buying large tracts of land, servicing them with roads and other amenities before they eventually sell the plots out to individuals. This is certainly a positive development which the government should streamline and adopt as the sole mode of land disposal. This will ensure that the communities that emerge out of such places are well planned and systematically laid out.
b) The state should continue to give support to the concept of real estate housing and real estate management. It is not difficult to observe that the few estates in the country have well planned settlements. For instance, government developed estates like Adenta Housing or privately developed estates like the Regimanuel Gray estates at East Airport, Kwabenya and Community 19 sites have been free from flooding. In the Netherlands for instance, individual development of residential properties appears to be non-existent, at least, in the major municipalities. Much of their residential built environment apart from being multi-family in nature, follow a model of conscious state-of-the-art settlement planning inculcating all the necessary services such as utility and transport into the design. Strong public-private partnership in their housing industry has been significantly key, something that seems to be seriously lacking in Ghana. This has both saved land for the Dutch government and also allowed for an effective inculcation of social interests into the human settlement planning. It is this and other reasons why the state should vigorously support the local real estate industry to develop more affordable houses both to achieve a well planned human settlement and also to reduce the housing deficit in the country. The Ghana Real Estate Developers Association (GREDA), if given the right incentives I believe, possesses enough capacity to build our dream human settlements.
Let me quickly add that promoting conscious human settlement planning is not adequate without a strong and better resourced community/estate management outfits. Such outfits would not only be interested in the management of those communities but would also come up with laws and regulations that seek to enhance the beauty and harmony of lives of the residents in these places.
Tema is fast deteriorating because the effectiveness of the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) has over the years been waning. As a result, there have been lots of unapproved developments and extensions to existing structures to the extent that the Harbor city is gradually losing its beauty and pride if not lost already. Dansoman estate, for the first time experienced flooding last year because of similar problems. Though it was beautifully planned and developed. I suspect Dansoman estate may not have come with an outfit responsible for ensuring that unapproved developments are prevented. . It is however invigorating to hear that SSNIT is in the process of implementing such a concept in all its estate houses across the country.
c) Institutions responsible for land-related issues like the Lands Commission, Land Title Registry, Land Valuation Board, Town and Country Planning and the planning offices in Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) ought to be more proactive. I am not quite sure if the Land Administration Project (LAP) has actually helped to expedite land registration and whether the planning departments in the MMDAs have the capacity to inspect ongoing building projects in their jurisdictions. The planning departments ought to be aggressive in preventing construction of buildings on water courses, flood-prone areas and places zoned for other land uses For instance, many houses are springing up around Trinity Theological Seminary of which no permit has been granted, because the said parcel of land is a subject of litigation. One would therefore wonder why owners of these building will develop them with such impunity and why the responsible Sub-Metro has not done anything to stop the development. Well, obviously it boils down to capacity, a subject which is not my focus for today.
As a country, we require a comprehensive national policy that seriously considers the totality of all the issues that affect housing and human settlement. I believe the above suggestions could be of great help. We are capable of building beautiful communities with well managed green belts and which are free from human-induced floods; it cannot remain just a dream, it can be achieved. It however requires a departure from the era where politicians have only paid lip services during trying moments like what we are witnessing today. The people require sustainable solutions to some of these decades’ old phenomena like flooding. The Ghanaian people also have a responsibility of shedding off lifestyles and attitudes which have served as catalysts to some of these flooding incidents.
I humbly urge the government to sit up and come up with more practical means of building better urban settlements that are comparable to those in other developing countries like South Africa, China, South Korea, UAE, etc. Floods may come anyway, but they should not come as a result of human actions or inactions, they should come only as a natural occurrence. We cannot keep mourning every year when the rains come!
Eugene Apea Owiredu
Akropong Akuapem
mianeok@yahoo.co.uk
