Residents in Accra especially motorists and those living in flood-prone parts of the city were yesterday justifiably apprehensive when rain clouds took over the sky. Their apprehension was hinged upon not knowing how the city was going to look like when the sky opens up.
The rain did come and although it did not last long, it left in its trail contents of the choked drainage system in the city. Like other downpours, it exposed the weakness inherent in our drainage in the city above all the recklessness of city dwellers. The latter’s relationship with the environment is wholly responsible for the choked state of gutters.
No effort is being made to address the poor attitude of dropping domestic wastes in gutters. We spend time and energy occasionally cleaning up gutters amidst fanfare and under media glare yet we do little to stop residents from dropping waste in the gutters. In the end, work done is zero because no sooner are the gutters de-choked than fresh volumes of waste dumped in there.
It is worth recalling previous calls for a consideration to cover our public gutters with slabs.
This for us is an effective means of protecting the gutters from being regarded as garbage dumps, which is what they are currently anyway. Reactivating the appropriate bylaws could help but considering our inability to enforce these leaves doubt about its effectiveness.
The amount of funds expended on desilting the city’s drains is enormous and to think this is done annually ahead of the raining season makes us wonder whether keepers’ of the state kitty get worried about the avoidable expenditure. It is avoidable because when we change our attitudes and cover the drains, we would not have to spend so much on annual desilting of drains.
With climate change taking its toll, we acknowledge the challenges in containing some of these weather situations but that nonetheless we should be able to mitigate these with good practices.
Some projects such as the Abossey Okai Interchange appear to be suffering some challenges, which would make it difficult to complete it before the raining season sets in. The negative effects of this delay could be telling when the rains set in.
The scene after yesterday’s downpour was especially inconveniencing for both motorists and pedestrians. They should perhaps ready themselves for the worst to come should the condition of the place remain so when the raining season is in full flight.