Let’s act now to prevent perennial flooding
Thursday was marked globally as the 42nd World Environment Day (WED).
It was on the theme: “Small Islands and Climate Change”, with the official slogan for this year's celebration of the day being: "Raise Your Voice, Not the Sea Level".
The WED, which is also called Eco Day, is celebrated on June 5, every year as a call for global awareness of taking action to protect the environment.
The day has been instituted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) since 1973 and the 2014 WED coincided with the International Year of Small Island Developing States of about 63 million people which was declared by the United Nations General Assembly to raise awareness of and draw attention to the critical issues facing the world's islands.
Incidentally, in Ghana the annual WED celebration coincided with hours of torrential rain in Accra and other parts of the country which exposed the country’s gaping deficiencies in managing its environment and its vulnerability to rainfall.
The annual ritual of flooding brought about by the indiscriminate dumping of refuse in drains, building on watercourses and improper city planning and development, with the city authorities looking on unconcerned, once again reared its head.
Many major roads and suburbs, especially in Accra, got flooded as a result of the incessant rainfall and also bad engineering, and resulted in chaotic traffic jams on major streets, which situation was worsened by big potholes.
We have become like the proverbial vulture that resolves to put up a house only after a rainfall but waits for another calamity to sit up.
Institutions and public officials charged with ensuring order in our cities have either grown all too familiar with the environmental challenges and are no longer moved or are simply in league with deviants to break the country’s law on city planning and road construction.
The Daily Graphic urges the authorities, such as the municipal, metropolitan and district assemblies, the Town and Country Planning Department, the Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD), the Department of Urban Roads, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and all state and quasi-state agencies tasked with ensuring environmental order, to be up and doing.
So long as organisations and individuals are allowed to flout the country’s building code and sanitation bye-laws with impunity, Ghana will continue to be saddled with environmental challenges that will only continue to put a strain on the national purse.
Although we have the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) in place, it does not mean we should continue to create conditions for disasters to strike for the organisation to manage every year as we do when we, for instance, build unauthorised structures at unauthorised places.
The Daily Graphic believes it is high time officials tasked with ensuring compliance with our environmental codes and sanity in our development but who become lax in their duties were axed and charged with negligence of duty anytime such preventable man-made disasters strike.
Individuals who litter indiscriminately and engage in negative activities inimical to the sustainable development of our environment must also be charged according to the bye-laws of the assemblies.
That is the only way we will be able to ensure sane development as a country.
