*After heavy downpour

Story: Reuben SACKEY

Torrential rains have left some parts of Accra flooded again. Yesterday’s morning downpour
lasted for about four hours.
Some commuters in the capital were badly affected as roads leading to workplaces and schools
were disrupted.
The flooded areas included Kaneshie, Achimota, Teshie, Dansoman, Darkuman and Kwame
Nkrumah Circle among others.
Meanwhile member of the Environment and Science Committee of Parliament, Hamza Adam
has asked the government to invest in rain water harvesting as a measure of addressing the
perennial floods in Ghana.
The legislator for Kumbungu Constituency told 3FM which was monitored by Today that
though floods were causing a lot of problems, they can also be solved profitably. One of the
creative and profitable ways to handle floods is harvesting of the flood water.
He stressed on the need to have a policy and a programme for water harvesting to take advantage
of the runoff generated by the rainstorms like it is being done in other places of the world.
“There are areas that experience flood during rains but after the flood, they experience draught”
he noted that water harvesting will be very beneficial to the people in those areas.
Water harvesting generally refers to the collection of rainstorm-generated runoff from a
particular area (a catchment) in order to provide water for human, animal, or crop use. Also, the
harvested water from the runoff can be stored in fire hydrants to help in fire fighting.
Currently, the number of fire hydrants in Ghana are woefully inadequate; a situation that the
Ghana National Fires Service has been complaining about for a while.
Lack of access to hydrants poses serious challenges to fire fighters whenever their fire tenders
run out of water during fire fighting. Firefighters depend on external water sources other than the

water in the tender to fight bigger fire outbreaks and fire hydrants guarantee a steady and secure
water supply from underlying water networks.
Hamza Adam wanted efforts towards public education and sensitization on human attitudinal
contributions to the floods intensified, as well as effective punishments for people whose actions
contribute to the flooding situation in Ghana. This will serve as a deterrent and motivation for
people to do the right things within the environment.