It’s been ‘terrible nightmares’ over a decade now with many rainy seasons. Usually, two rainy seasons are experienced which are the major and minor seasons. However, the rains flood some parts of the country with areas especially Adabraka – Odawna typically and Official Town suffering under the sometimes very severe flooding. The recent rains, particularly the one on Saturday, October 10, 2020, forced residents down a suburb called ‘Sahara’ to move up safer grounds, but more seriously mechanics (fitters) at Odawna together with their machinery were also displaced following the heavy rain.
There have been arguments about how to solve the perennial flooding and usually what comes up first is people who have built on waterways. A visit to the area after the rain showed that despite the dense population, and close to the Odaw riverbank, the entire stretch of the waterway from Avenor was completely filled with sand or silt.
According to some residents, the situation has been like that for months before the rains, yet we have ‘big men’ plying the Graphic Road and crossing the bridge under which the Odaw passes into the Korley lagoon, as well as the bridge at Circle and have seen how dirty the Odaw river has been polluted by refuse moving downwards from Alajo—a suburb of Accra—and people who reside along the banks from its head to the tail of the channel.
The ‘big men’ also know very well that another issue closing up the water channel through to the Korley lagoon is the issue of scrap dealers dumping into the river their wastes—mainly cables, plastics, and casings—in the full glare of the public. Yet, city authorities are tightlipped about this very serious health concern. These are terrible issues that were identified to also contribute greatly to the flooding because the water when it rains does not have a course and so it finds its own way and level like the saying rightly goes …… water finds its own level.
Due to this problem, auto mechanics also known as ‘fitters’ having their workshops and garages at Odawna had to move swiftly all vehicles to high and safe grounds so they may not suffer incurring debts which may arise from floodwaters damaging clients’ vehicles. In the process of moving these vehicles, they create chaos as a result of rushing to park anyhow and anywhere along the shoulders of roads due to the scare and panic of losing properties to the floods.
Last weekend’s torrential rains caused the usual scare and panic to ‘fitters’, hence their usual improper parking in the streets of the neighbourhood with all kinds of vehicles. The pictures below show the haphazard parking as a result of flood panic and scare.
By: Joseph David Clottey.
