Floods: City planners disregard Accra’s flat terrain – Jantuah

The Government of Ghana and city planners have been accused of overlooking the fact that Accra is geographically flat, a situation that makes the area flood-prone. Hence, proper planning and measures should be instituted to deal with flooding in the capital city, Kwame Jantuah, Chief Executive Officer for the African Energy Consortium, has revealed.

According to him, devastating floods, including the June 3 flood and fire disasters, that have plagued Accra over the years give credence to the fact that city planners and government officials did not take into account the nature of the city.

“There is a strategic thing about Accra that politicians [and] planners seem to overlook. [That strategic thing] is that Accra is flat,” he said on TV3‘s New Day programme on Saturday June 4 in connection with the June 3 twin disasters.

“And, so, because of that, we have actually not planned how to handle floods in Accra,” he noted.

The energy expert further stated: “You compare Accra to other cities in Ghana. Accra is flat land, and, so, because it is [a] flat land, when it rains what happens? The water either stagnates or finds its own way. There are no hills or rivers to direct it into a particular area.”

He revealed that Ghana’s first president, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, had realised the topography of the capital city and accordingly instituted measures to deal with the perennial flood situation, but successive governments had failed to adopt further measures to completely deal with the problem.

“Nkrumah realised that Accra was [flat]. So what did he do?” he asked rhetorically, adding: “There is a drain that runs from [Kwame Nkrumah] Circle straight to the sea that is totally blocked now.

“Because he [Dr Nkrumah] realised that within [the Kwame Nkrumah] Circle alone, when it rained the amount of water collected there flooded the whole place, he built that drain.”

He further asked: “What successive governments have done?

“We [Successive governments] don’t seem to take certain things that affect the ordinary man so seriously and sanitation and floods are one.”