Engineer and planner who doubles as a local governance expert, Issaka Amon-Kotei, has opined that Ghanaians are not to be blamed for the occurrence of floods in some parts of the country.
According to him, the country experiences these floods because our systems do not work and not because of the attitude of Ghanaians.
In an interview with Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning show, he divulged that our system has tampered with the natural artifacts that exist to prevent flooding while failing to set rules and regulations to control the floods.
“The point I am making is that we don’t have a working system as a people. We have what we call natural artifacts be it the mountains, the air we breathe, the trees, everything on and beneath the earth including humans. We, the human beings decided to change the natural artifacts into artificial artifacts, so we can produce television oven, build houses, construct roads and all that. In the course of doing that we have to tamper with the natural artifact. If you tamper with the natural artifact without rules and regulations, you end up creating more problems and this is exactly where we find ourselves”, he said.
When quizzed by host Samuel Eshun, if there were not already rules and regulation to prevent flood, he responded, “There should be a program to manage the environment. It is one thing writing some points and keeping it on shelves and another applying it”.
He was insistent that no one can blame Ghanaians for the floods we experience because all Ghanaians are rational human beings who will not deliberately choke drainage systems.
Overnight rains from June 8 to 9, 2020, led to damaging floods in the city of Accra, Ghana. The National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) confirmed one fatality and two others missing.
By: Alberta Dorcas N D Armah