Rawlings demands bulldozer

• Posted on June 5, 2015
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

Former President Jerry Rawlings yesterday reminisced about the days when he joined officers and men of the Ghana Armed Forces to save lives and property in times of disaster.

This was when he visited parts of the capital, Accra, the morning after a downpour and a raging inferno claimed several lives and property, leaving others injured and homeless.

Mr Rawlings could not stand the sight and level of devastation when he visited the fire-ravaged GOIL filling station at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra which reportedly claimed close to 120 lives from the explosion during the storm.

He therefore wished he had the wherewithal to pull down illegal structures on waterways which had been causing such disasters.

“I wish I had a bulldozer”, he told anxious journalists when he arrived at the scene where close to 100 charred dead bodies had been packed in the buckets of waiting trucks to be taken to the mortuary.

Those were victims of the explosion that occurred at the filling station the previous night during the deadly storm.

The former President had since stressed the need for the razing down of buildings on waterways as a first step towards solving the perennial floods in the capital.

He blamed the illegal structures for last night’s wreckage that came after the torrential rains.

Even before the floods subsided for actual figures to be recorded, well over 100 persons had been reported dead, with several others sustaining various degrees of injuries.

Furthermore, thousands had been rendered homeless, with several vehicles being burnt in the process, while others were either flooded or carried away by the ravaging storm.

Mahama’s Resolve

Meanwhile, President John Mahama has indicated government’s readiness to take what he called ‘drastic measures’ to reduce the impact of floods and fires, describing the disaster as catastrophic and unprecedented.

Even though he admitted to the fact that government had often been compelled by circumstances in dealing with people who had built on waterways in the capital, he noted that the time had come for lasting measures to end perennial flooding.

“We have to take some measures to avoid this in the future. Often when these measures are drastic, you have a lot of sympathy and pressure not to take these measures. But I think the time has come for us to move houses out of the waterways,” he observed.

He said “the public should understand that it is necessary to take such measures to save everybody else.”

Akufo-Addo’s Worry

Flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo was equally traumatized when he arrived at the disaster-hit filling station, describing the floods and the fire incident as a major tragedy and a dark moment for Accra.

“It’s a tragedy; major tragedy for Accra. It’s a dark moment in the history of our city,” he told journalists during his rounds to some of the hard-hit areas in the capital.

He stressed the need for the enforcement of existing laws in the country to prevent the recurrence of such disasters.

“For the time being, let’s focus on the human tragedy that has occurred. It is a trying moment but it is also a time that you have to renew your faith in the Almighty,” he said.

By Charles Takyi-Boadu