98% of Accra’s flooding issues still unresolved – Works & Housing Ministry

The Deputy Minister of Works and Housing, Dr Prince Hamid Armah, says only 2% of the flooding situation in the Greater Accra region has been addressed.

“If you take Greater Accra, the intervention that the Greater Accra Resilience and Integrated Development Project (GARIP) that we put in a lot of resources to be able to address the problem, we are solving only two per cent of the flooding situation in Greater Accra,” the deputy sector minister, Dr Prince stressed.

This is despite the investment of GH₵ 450 million in the National Flood Control and Priority Drainage Programme and a World Bank $200 million spent on the Greater Accra Resilient Integrated Development Project (GARID).

According to him, addressing the drainage situation requires proper demarcation and mapping of the regional landscape and all the drainage systems to accurately estimate a budget for the necessary work.

He stated that additional investment was needed to fix the flooding challenge and that the government alone could not finance it.

“The allocation of the recently approved additional $150 million tranche of the GARID project will be partially used for re-scoping the project and settling compensations,” he said in an interview on Joy News.

Ghana ranks highly among African countries that are most exposed to risks from multiple weather-related hazards.

In the past three decades, the country has experienced many flooding cases. The devastating flood and fire disaster in the Odaw catchment on 3rd June 2015 led to the unfortunate loss of about 150 lives.

Angry residents around the Dome Parakou Estate Junction blocked the major stretch on June 13 to protest the poor drainage system constructed some months ago is the present case of flooding to be recorded in Accra.

According to the residents, the construction was poorly done, leaving them vulnerable anytime it rains.

The residents say the poor construction causes their rooms to get flooded and properties to be destroyed anytime there is heavy rainfall.