President John Mahama has assured Ghanaians that the government is taking steps to reduce the impact of flooding, acknowledging that while floods cannot be completely eliminated because they are natural disasters, their devastating effects can be significantly minimised.
The President made the remarks on Wednesday, July 8, during a meeting of the National Security Council convened to assess the aftermath of the June 29 floods, which affected several communities in southern Ghana.
The Council received briefings from the Post-Flood Mitigation Task Force and its subcommittees on the extent of the flooding, ongoing emergency response efforts, and plans to reduce the risk of future disasters.
“In the aftermath of the floods that affected a lot of the southern coastal part of our country, I deemed it necessary for us to have a national security meeting to discuss the issues arising out of that natural disaster,” President Mahama said.
Describing the floods as one of the worst the country has experienced in recent years, he attributed the severity of the incident to the growing effects of climate change, which he said has resulted in increasingly intense rainfall.
“It’s become a recurring incident, but of course, this was far worse than any that we have seen, both because of the vagaries of climate change. It looks like, increasingly every year, the rainfall is getting heavier, and it means that we have to see what mitigation measures to put in place,” he stated.
The President also blamed rapid urbanisation, particularly in Accra, for worsening the flooding situation.
According to him, increasing demand for land has led to the encroachment of waterways and flood retention areas that were originally designated for the passage and containment of stormwater.
He disclosed that the government has tasked the military with supporting flood mitigation efforts, while the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) and other agencies continue to distribute relief items to affected communities.
President Mahama noted that although a flood mitigation task force had been established before the disaster and had undertaken some dredging of waterways, the unprecedented volume of rainfall overwhelmed existing interventions.
He further revealed that the Ministry of Finance has released funds from the contingency fund to finance additional flood mitigation measures.
“We might not be able to completely eliminate flooding because it’s a natural disaster that happens not only in our part of the world; it happens in other areas, but we can minimize it and make its effect less disastrous,” he said.
The President pointed out that several countries across West and Central Africa, from Gabon to Côte d’Ivoire, also experienced severe flooding and recorded casualties.
He expressed hope that the government’s interventions would help reduce the hardship faced by affected residents and better prepare the country for future flooding events.
