Nii Lante Vanderpuye, the National Coordinator of the District Road Improvement Programme (DRIP), has said that Ghana’s perennial flooding issues are linked to the country’s under-resourced assemblies.
According to Nii Lante Vanderpuye, Ghana’s flooding challenges are due to the country’s local government system.
The former MP disclosed that the metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies have not been adequately resourced to complete their duties efficiently.
He detailed that Ghana’s decentralisation framework has not been backed by the level of resources required.
Speaking on Eyewitness News on Thursday, Vanderpuye detailed, “I think we have not been too serious with our local government system. We have not been too serious with it”.
“I won’t blame the assemblies per se because you cannot dissolve responsibilities without accompanying resources. When we starve the assemblies of the needed resources, these are the things we’ll see,” he stated.
“Decentralisation means the central government dissolving some of its responsibilities to the local assemblies. And so when you are dissolving them, you must give them commensurate, proportional resources to be able to undertake those responsibilities because you can’t give me a job without giving me the tools to be able to embark upon that job,” he said.
“As a country, I think that we need to do more in terms of making sure that our assemblies are responsive to the needs of the people they serve,” he added.
In related news, Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the Minister for the Interior, has disclosed that 70 excavators seized from illegal mining operators will be handed over to the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO).
The Minister for the Interior revealed that the excavators will be handed to NADMO to support the nationwide desilting exercise aimed at addressing the flooding challenges across the country.
According to the Minister, the confiscated equipment during anti-galamsey operations will be redeployed for public use to improve drainage systems and reduce the impact of flooding in urban centres, particularly Accra.
Responding to questions on the Floor of Parliament on Wednesday, June 10, the Interior Minister made this known, saying, “Currently, what we are doing is that all the seized excavators from the illegal mining activities – we agreed that about 70 of them should be given to NADMO so that they can take them across the country to do desilting.
“We will do the handover next week so that they can use them to desilt most of the drains, but the bottom line is we should begin to clean our surroundings.”
Meanwhile, the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMeT) has warned Ghanaians of more rains across both coastal and inland areas in the coming days.
According to the GmeT, residents must be alert and stay away from flood-prone communities.
Joseph Tetteh Portuphy, the Deputy Director in charge of Forecasting at GmeT, explains that further rains are expected.
He cautioned that places already saturated trigger flooding in vulnerable communities.
Speaking to Citi News, the Deputy Director in charge of Forecasting at GmeT stated, “Over the coast and inland areas… but for us on the eastern coast, since it is a system that is passing, later in the day it will come down. Places are already flooded. Any little rain that comes again will flood the places. So we should be cautious and avoid places that are already saturated and already flooded”.
“We should also make sure that they stay tuned to the weather information. As I said, we are still in June. And until we get out of June, we should expect more of these rains to come,” he added.
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