Are We Ready For The Rains?

The rainy season is here, a time of the year when some residents of Accra sit on tenterhooks because of the perennial floods they endure.

For those who do not suffer directly because of their locations, the motorists among them will nonetheless encounter the inconveniences of flooding on some roads in the city in their daily commuting.

The rain which visited Accra on Monday left in its trail massive inconveniences to especially commuters heading for Kasoa and surrounding areas.

The Abossey Okai area, where the flyover construction is uncompleted, will exact its peculiar challenges, unfortunately.

The question that should be posed at this time is whether or not both residents and the authorities are primed for the season?

With the challenges of not knowing what the season holds in terms of weather clemency, we can only look on helplessly and hope that what has been done so far would offer sufficient protection when the elements get rough.

Although there has been desilting activities in the city prior to the onset of the season, we are nonetheless uncomfortable as the rains arrive.

The fundamental challenges of proper planning and enforcement of existing by-laws are still nowhere near being addressed.

The city authorities must enforce the appropriate by-laws to compel residents to be environmentally decent. Such warnings are hardly implemented in this country.

Many years after the worst rainy season disaster was recorded in Accra, the actions decided upon during the probe into the havoc, and the recommendations, have become archival stuff resting on shelves in some government departments.

We appreciate the place of the human face in such matters but the consequences of environmental recklessness outweigh the interests of individuals who do not understand the effects of their collective impudence.

Construction of structures on waterways, the source of most of the flooding we encounter at this time of the year, has not stopped and those engaged in the breaches have not suffered any formal consequences of their lawlessness.

At this time of the year, the engineering deficiencies of road construction in some parts of the city become visible. Some parts of the city's roads have become notorious for trapping rainwater in large volumes when it rains, and of course, impeding vehicular traffic.

The part of the dual carriageway around Regency Hotel as one drives towards the Association International School, under the railway overpass, is notorious for such inconveniences when it rains. What is responsible for the floods at this location has not yet received attention.

The mega-project announced a few years ago to contain the perennial flooding is yet to be acknowledged.

We hope that the media would not have to repeat the stories of pain and destruction associated with the season on whose threshold we have already set foot.

But with nothing substantial done to obviate the situation and with the mindset of the average Ghanaian still what it was four years ago, it would appear that the rainy season woes are nowhere near leaving us.