Proper community planning reduces pandemic impact

When the Town and Country Planning Department was established in 1945 with the mandate to plan and manage the growth and development of cities, towns and villages in the country, the expectation was that the department would become a unique, technically capable and proactive entity capable of contributing effectively to the rational development of sustainable human settlements.

But over the years, many people think the department has not been able to deliver on its mandate. This is against the backdrop that the ordinary person witnesses unauthorised structures springing up every day, sometimes in waterlogged areas, on the banks of water bodies, in watercourses and even in glaring demarcated streets among many other areas that one does not expect developments to take place, leading to uncoordinated settlement on land without reference to any predetermined standards of planning.

At other times too we have looked on for squatters to occupy settlements only for us to face difficulty ejecting them.

We might have looked on over the years but the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its subsequent global spread must be a wake-up call to us in Ghana to cease looking on while our development is haphazardly done either because we have left it in the hands of lawless citizens or the experts who have been mandated to ensure orderly siting of structures have reneged on their responsibilities.

A visit around some of our communities brings one face to face with the danger we encounter as a country in this time of COVID-19 when one of the surest ways of preventing infection is social distancing. In many communities, there is hardly any street to even separate houses. One moves from his bedroom and goes through somebody’s hall and lands straight in the alleys. For some, you cannot differentiate between a compound and a road, not to talk of a street. In such dire circumstances, how effective can physical distancing be practised to keep the ravaging disease – COVID-19 – at bay?

The pandemic has taught us a great lesson; it is dangerous to postpone what we must do, since the consequences would catch up with us.

But we must act. We cannot look at the dangers many of our citizens who live in such unplanned areas face while the disease ravages.

As we wait for the pandemic to end so that, hopefully, we institute measures that will ensure that we plan our towns and cities well for the benefit of the populace themselves, we must ensure that these unplanned communities with their attendant vulnerabilities to the spread of diseases are managed in such a way that they do not become an albatross that will hang on the neck of the whole nation as far as defeating disease-causing viruses are concerned.

COVID-19 will certainly pass. But even before and after, we must make conscious efforts to plan our cities, which will go a long way to make it easier to manage any outbreak of diseases in the future.

But all is not lost. We must scale up education by involving opinion leaders on how to cooperate with the mandated bodies to ensure that our cities, towns and communities are properly planned.

There are many advantages to be derived from a well planned environment and in the midst of the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, which is sparing no life, such a move will go a long way to keep the society out of harm’s way.