June 3 flood, fire victims dissappointed with package
Hundreds of the June 3 flood and fire disaster victims who gathered at the conference room of the Ministry of Communications yesterday to collect compensation packages from a benevolent organisation were disappointed as their expectations could not be met.
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Some of the victims who came from outside the Greater Accra Region complained that the money they spent travelling to Accra for the package was more than the value of the packages they received.
Even before the distribution began, some of the victims whose names were on the list were asked to leave the ministry’s conference room where the event took place because they had not been contacted by phone to be at the venue that morning.
The package
When they finally but reluctantly went outside, 50 beneficiaries, who were said to have been invited to come with their Identity cards, were each presented with a parcel containing a five-kilogramme bag of rice, one 1.5 litre cooking oil, a tin of corned beef and one non-alcoholic drink.
The benevolent organisation, Seed of Change, a partnership between Ms Betty Barnes and Mr. Andrew Boateng that is based in the United Kingdom, failed to disclose how much was in the entire package to the media.
Responding to a probe for the cash value of the items, Ms Barnes said “the most important thing is that we wanted to reach out to the victims. As to how much was used, it is between God and us”.
Observe good sanitation
Meanwhile receiving the items on behalf of the beneficiaries, the Deputy Greater Accra Regional Minister, Mr Isaac Nii Danmah Vanderpuye, thanked the organisation for its kind gesture.
Speaking on behalf of the Regional Minister, Nii Laryea Afotey Agbo, he called on the public to desist from dumping refuse into gutters and building on water courses.
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Those acts, he said, accounted for the perennial flooding in Accra, which resulted in the loss of several lives in June last year.
“I will like to urge the public to take the National Sanitation Day seriously in order to keep the environment clean and prevent a future occurrence of this unfortunate situation,” he said.
Background
On June 3, last year, about 200 people lost their lives at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle through a flood and fire disaster after a downpour. Since then, several organisations and individuals have in one way or another donated items to the families of the deceased and survivors of the twin disaster.
Ms Barnes and Mr Andrew, Ghanaians resident in the UK, sourced funds from families, friends and churches to support the victims.