Monday, June 29 2026, is going to become another sad day to remember in our history about perennial floods in the city of Accra.
It was sad to watch television footages as well as videos on social media reliving the stresses and woes some residents and drivers were going through.
This time around, almost every area in the city, even parts of the airport, Independence Avenue, Kwame Nkrumah Circle and the relatively new areas such as Tse Addo.
In all this, there were simulated actions by the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), the Ghana Armed Forces, Fire Service and patriotic individuals to help minimise the hardships around. Reportedly, we have sadly lost 12 people.
Accra floods
But why are we nit-picking and crying about Accra floods?
I have, in the past written three articles on Accra floods, including the unfortunate disaster of June 3, 2015 when over 130 people reportedly lost their lives in the midst of torrential rains, flooding and fire outbreak at a Goil filling station near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle.
Flooding in Accra has been a topic that has never gone anywhere for years now.
Sadly, when it happens, there are knee jerk reactions from the authorities and we get back to our old selfish and reckless habits once the rainy season is over.
It is no secret that the problem of choked drains resulting from indiscriminate disposal of plastics and other solid waste in communities is a huge contributor to floods in Accra, coupled with poor drainage systems.
What we have not been successful with is stopping the indiscriminate disposal of filth, including non-degradable plastics and stop building in waterways.
Plastic waste
Take the issue of plastic waste for example, many reasons have been adduced by experts on how to deal with the situation including the use of non-biodegradable plastics but none of our successive governments have seen the need to ban such plastics sometimes citing loss of jobs as one excuse.
The indiscriminate disposal of plastics in our environments, including the beaches, is a great eyesore whenever the rains descend heavily.
If countries like Rwanda have been able to successfully eliminate the use of plastics, so can Ghana.
If a country like Kenya actively encourages the production and use of biodegradable plastics, as well as the use of paper and cloth bags in shops, what is barring Ghana from taking its first step forward?
If truly where there is a will, there is a way, then by now, Governments should have moved many steps ahead to lessen or curtail perennial flooding in the capital.
If successive governments have had the will to implement the numerous suggestions from experts over the years, surely, they could have done so with the power they wield.
But alas, it has never been.
Local Assemblies
With all this, however, one’s greatest grouse is with the local Assemblies as development agents who are in direct and closer contact with communities.
These Assemblies collect rates and taxes from their constituents without fail.
What those monies are used for, some of our communities have always wondered, because we exist in a jurisdiction where individual residents construct their own drainages, fix their own access roads as well as provide their own street lights.
Communities are arranging their own waste collection and try to put up with nuisance neighbours in terms of ear drumming noises, air pollution, overgrown environments and unacceptable habits like diverting their soak away water from their premises onto untarred public roads.
Prioritising the needs of residents, should be of concern to local Assemblies.
t a time when jobless youth are searching for jobs and the promise of a 24-hour economy is in the offing, why are the Assemblies not leading the way by creating and offering “community inspection” jobs available to our teeming youth?
Such employees could be assigned communities with roles to inspect and monitor irresponsible attitudes in littering, unkempt environments, and bad citizenship attitudes that hurt other residents and apply sanctions.
A hotel up our rough untarred road is causing nightmares with floods, overgrown weeds with passers by taking advantage to throw litter there.
This same hotel has created a soak away outlet that lets their surface water from their premises onto the untarred public access road, creating water stagnation, erosion and flooding in homes.
Individuals have complained to them, reports have been made to the Assembly but they see no evil and hear no evil.
On the same untarred road, another home owner has also created a soak away outlet into the public access road that directs all their surface water out onto the road.
For how long should such impunities and ultra-selfish behaviours which add to the discomfort of neighbours in the rainy season be tolerated?
Yet if one had an active, Assembly at work, with residents’ interest at heart, such reckless behaviours would be arrested and sanctions applied as deterrent.
Yes, let us moan and sympathise with those whose comfort and properties get disturbed with floods.
If only the local Assemblies were to act efficiently and without hesitation, stop indiscriminate litter and stuffed drains which lead to floods, a lot could be achieved for the benefit of residents.
It is not too later to act.
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