June 3 disaster: Government abandons recommendation to harvest rainwater – BPS

The Chief of Party at the Bureau of Public Safety, Nana Yaw Akwada has blamed the Ministry of Works and Housing and the Metropolitan, Municipal District Assemblies (MMDAs) for failing to uphold the recommendations of the June 3, twin disaster committee.

According to him, there was a recommendation for the Ministry and the MMDAs to ensure mandatory harvesting of rainwater by households.

He said this recommendation which has the tendency of reducing the water levels in the country when it rains over the past seven years has not been adhered to.
The Committee members were from both Ministry of Defence and Interior (Colonel M. Mustapha, Chief Supt. Raymond Simpi, Deputy Chief Fire Officer William J. Mensah) as well as Engineer Ametefe Wise a hydrologist and drainage consultant and the Chairman of National Disaster Management (NADMO’s) with the retired Appeals Court Judge, Justice Isaac Douse as Chairman of the Committee.
Mr. Akwada made this revelation in an interview on the commemoration of the June 3 disaster in 2015, on Accra-based Class 91.3 FM’s midday on Friday, June 3, 2022.

He said the recommendations among other things called for the complete dredging of the Odaw drain, and a ban on the use of plastics as carrier bags.

According to the committee report, the overflow of the Odaw river coupled with the Korle Lagoon interceptor blockage and the rainfall-runoff caused the flooding, while the displacement of fuel from the Goil fuel station tanker into the flood and the immediate dropping of lit cigarette stubs by one Seth Kwasi Ofosu onto the floating fuel caused the fire.

He stressed that the government set up a committee to find possible causes of the disaster and damages, and costs and make recommendations but seven years on, the recommendations have been abandoned.

He said when the report was ready, the Ministry of Interior failed to make the details of the report available and took the ingenuity of the Bureau of Public Safety to make the recommendations of the report available to the public.
He questioned whether the government was committed to the implementation of the recommendations of the committee adding that this is a matter of action, not words.

“For instance, adequate tooling of disaster managers was top among the committee recommendations for implementation yet fire service get to the scene of fire disasters without water in their tanks,” he bemoaned.

He said the recommendations led to the passage of the new NADMO Act (ACT 927 of 2016) into law to cater to the findings in the committee’s report.