President to launch national pre-flood clean up March 27

Sat. February 27, 2010

PRESIDENT J.E.A. Mills will lead the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to launch a “national pre-floods” clean-up campaign in Accra on March 27, this year.
The exercise, which is expected to minimise the effects of floods when they occur, involves clearing drains and bushy areas throughout the country, most especially identified flood-prone areas.
On June 19, 2009, heavy floods in the western part of Accra claimed at least seven lives and caused massive destruction to private and public property after two hours of rain.
Disaster managers described the floods as the most destructive in recent times, with the most affected places being Sakaman, Mataheko and Kaneshie.
The floods also washed away the bitumen on the main Kaneshie First Light-Mpamprom road and caused some of the vehicles caught in the rush-hour traffic to float and crash into one another.
Speaking to the Daily Graphic on the proposed national clean-up exercise, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of NADMO, Major Nicholas Mensah (retd), said the organisation would, from Monday, March 1, begin a massive education programme on the exercise to enable the populace to know what to do during the exercise.
He stressed that people from all sections of the Ghanaian society would be mobilised for the exercise.
He said NADMO was collaborating with all stakeholders, such as the Ghana National Fire Service, the Ghana Armed Forces, city authorities, the Hydrological Services Department, opinion leaders, traditional authorities, as well as local communities, to enforce measures already put in place to curtail the effects of floods which had become a perennial problem.
Some of those measures included the identification of flood-prone areas where residents had been advised on how to prevent floods and also protect themselves should such a disaster occur.
Major Mensah said as a long-term plan, NADMO, together with the other interest groups, would see to the enforcement of the building code, find solutions to the problem of people building on water courses, stop the indiscriminate felling of trees and embark on the reconstruction of some drains which, due to rapid development, could no longer take the surface water when it rained.
He also touched on the need to look at the issue of unplanned development in the communities and the indiscriminate sale and purchase of land around the country.