Editorial

UPPER EAST NEEDS OUR SUPPORT

Fatal floods that hit the Upper East Region have claimed 29 lives and injured 19 as was reported by the Ghanaian Times today.

Our information is that, the death toll is likely to rise and more people are going to be displaced by unusual torrential rains in the month of October.

The rainfall being experienced in that part of the country is out of season and had taken residents unaware. Several houses have collapsed, others damaged and crops destroyed in a specter that the communities have never seen before.

The floods have also destroyed farms, livestock have been swept away and everyday activities have been disrupted, with the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) warning of shortage of relief items.

Although, the Regional Director of NADMO in-charge of operations, Mr David Mbah, indicated that, NADMO would provide relief items to support affected communities, he also said that, it did not have enough to support the victims and appealed for assistance from the government, non-governmental organisations as well as philanthropists.

We are concerned about the floods that have displaced so many people, killed others and disrupted economic activities in those communities.

Our sympathies go to the people who have been harmed by the rains and floods and are going to face hardship in the coming days and if humanitarian assistance does not get to the affected people sooner, the situation would become dire.

Already, majority of the people living in many of those communities are poor and whatever they are going through is only going to add to their misery.

It is, therefore, our hope that the government and all stakeholders would get humanitarian assistance to the areas as quickly as possible.

The rainfall in the area, we are told, is unusual and the destruction of infrastructure unprecedented and sadly the livelihoods and the resilience of the affected communities have been weakened and rendered vulnerable.

That is why; we call for a swift response to the flooding in that area, so that, the people can be saved from further hardships.

Natural disasters like floods cannot be prevented but as a country we must thrive to be prepared at all times to deal with them.

In this regard, we encourage the NADMO not to only wait until people are hit by these disasters before non perishable relief items like mattresses and bedsheets are harnessed.

It must be a national policy that some of these nonperishable items are always made available at the various warehouses of the organisation to swiftly address the housing challenged when people are displaced.

Meanwhile, we call on the NADMO to take steps to relocate persons who may still be living in flood prone areas to avoid further disasters as the Ghana Meteorological Agency has warned that more rains were expected till the end of this month.

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