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 the 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.
Unfortunately, over some decades now, the rainy season has brought nothing but pain and grief to most Ghanaians, especially those in Accra and some 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. This recent flooding is said to be the worst flooding catastrophe in ten years. Similarly, a 27th June 2009 edition of the Daily Graphic reported seven deaths from the 2009 flooding. Aside from deaths, properties running into several billions of cedis are usually lost to these floods whilst most of the flooding victims become either displaced or homeless. For example, the devastation in Swedru had been so severe that inhabitants in this Township had called for the president, John E. A. Mills, to declare a state of emergency for the Swedru municipality.
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 considered by those responsible for decision making.
Flooding imposes precarious security threat to our citizenry. In most modern democracies, threats against national security no longer emanate from external aggression but, now much more importantly, from natural and environmental catastrophes such as flooding, desertification and global warming. That is why militarization of the environment is gradually becoming an important concept to consider. Most flooding in Ghana, instead of primarily resulting from purely natural circumstances, emanate rather from man-made conditions such as poor human settlement planning and management; and actions and in-actions of responsible people. 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 ongoing discussion 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 no clear drainage designs and implementation. To solve this problem, the state should ensure that parcels of land are not sold until they are serviced: connection to water, electricity as well as construction of drains and roads. Legal modalities should be considered by the state to ensure that this is implemented. 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. But I believe that owners of large tracts of land should be made to service these parcels of land with support from 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 sell the plots out to individuals. This is certainly a positive development which the government should streamline and adopt as the only mode of land disposal.
b) The state should promote the concept of estates. It is a common place to find that the few estates in the country have well planned and laid out settlements. Flooding as they occur annually in the country is non-existent in these estates, whether government developed like Dansoman or privately developed like Regimanuel Gray estates at East Airport, Kwabenya and the ongoing one at Katamanso. In the Netherlands, there is almost nothing like single-family dwelling houses, at least, in the major municipalities. There are more of apartments with very good community planning. There is therefore a strong public-private partnership in the real estate industry, something that is seriously lacking in Ghana. This has both saved land for the Dutch government and also allowed for the royal state to effectively inculcate 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 estates both to achieve a well planned human settle for our country and also help to reduce the housing deficit.
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 example, those who ply the Oyarifa-Ayi Mensah route have always been questioning why the Abokobi District Assembly has allowed individuals to build on the stretch of land about half a kilometer after the Oyarifa Township. This parcel of land is a flood prone area. Any time the rains come heavily, this place becomes flooded. Will the Assembly look on unconcerned till a future flooding in this area lead to human loss?
If the above suggestions are seriously considered together with others, we would largely solve the problem of erecting buildings at unauthorized places which eventually contribute to flooding. It would also help us to develop a more beautiful human settlement with the characteristics of well managed green belts and conscious promotion of urban forestry.
I 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 any way, 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
[email protected]