There were devastating floods in certain communities in the Central Region of the country on Saturday following a downpour.
The floods were as a result of the Kakum and Surowi rivers over-flowing their banks.
The floods destroyed bridges and roads, thereby making the road network in the affected areas impassable.
One of such bridges is the one over River Surowi at Jukwa on the Cape Coast-Twifo Praso road, making motorists going to Jukwa to make a detour using the Cape Coast-Yamoransa-AssinFosu-TwifoPraso road.
Besides, more than 700 houses were submerged in different communities.
Affected places included Simiw, Nkontrodo, Ntranoa, Abina, Atonkwa andAnkaful in the Elmina Municipality and Amamoma and Kwaprow in the Cape Coast Metropolis.
Unfortunately, a prison officer who tried to assist someone to wade through the flood waters died in the process as he was swept away by the speeding waters.
That is to say besides the destruction of property, a life was lost, which is most regrettable because there was a kind-hearted man who was trying to help a compatriot.
May his gentle and caring soul get rest in the bosom of the Lord.
The Ghanaian Times is also asking the bereaved family to accept its sympathies as it shares in their grief and appeals to them to be strong at this trying moment.
It is good to hear that the flooding in the Central Region was not induced by man but by natural forces that were beyond the ability of man to control.
It seems this year can pass as a year of devastating flooding because international media too carry cases of flooding in some Asian and South American countries, which are mostly as a result of natural causes like downpours and rivers overflowing their banks.
What that means is that precautions should be the order of the day, hence those living in the flood-prone communities or areas in the country must take seriously the advice given by the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO).
However, the Ghanaian Times would like to appeal to NADMO to be specific in the pieces of advice it gives with regard to disasters.
What kind of precaution does it want the people to take?
One of the functions of NADMO is to prevent disasters and it is to do this by creating awareness of disasters through intensive public education.
The Ghanaian Times stands to be corrected but it seems NADMO has failed in that area.
A bit of that function is seen only when disasters have already occurred and even on those occasions, NADMO officials say a few things, with some of them not properly articulated.
That is not good enough to make the people take the necessary precautions.
Yes. The people living in the flood-prone areas may be wrong in the decision to live in such areas, but they alone cannot be blamed.
Successive governments have failed to deliver the units of housing to accommodate the people, particularly the vulnerable.
The sad thing about it is that greedy politicians and other public officials hijack the few units delivered.
Besides, the assemblies and agencies like the NADMO fail in their mandates to apply the law to stop development in such dangerous areas.
The people want places to lay their heads and so they risk to live in those places once the state organisations mandated to prevent them from living there are sleeping on the job.
It is about time the needful was done to prevent human-induced flooding like building in water ways, throwing rubbish into drains and inaction of state institutions mandated to handle the situation.
It is also the time to take actions to ameliorate the effects of flooding that is truly natural as that which occurred in the Central Region on Saturday.
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