Tuesday, 27th May, 2025
Hon Mohammed Adamu Ramadan
Adentan
Thank you very much Mr Speaker.
In recent days, parts of the Adentan Constituency have experienced significant flooding due to heavy rainfall. This situation has caused disruptions to daily life, property damage, and raised serious concerns amongst residents about the state of our drainage infrastructure and flood preparedness.
Mr Speaker, as a Constituency, we do acknowledge that flooding is not a new issue in the Adentan Constituency. However, the increasing frequency and intensity of these events demand urgent and sustained action.
Mr Speaker, the Adentan Municipal Assembly (AdMA) is actively engaging the relevant national authorities, including the Ghana Hydrological Services Department and National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), to coordinate a comprehensive and immediate response.
Mr Speaker, our immediate priorities include clearing and desilting of major drains and waterways to ensure the free flow of stormwater, immediate assessment of flood-prone areas to provide relief and support to affected households, accelerating the completion of key drainage projects already underway within the constituency, and community engagement and public education on waste disposal practices and flood safety.
Mr Speaker, the recent flooding incident in the Adentan Constituency is a stark reminder of the urgent need to address both short-term and structural challenges that continue to affect the safety and wellbeing of our residents. Over the past few days, several communities within the constituency have suffered from the flooding and are posing a serious risk to lives.
Mr Speaker, one of the primary causes of this recurring issue is the encroachment and construction of natural waterways and drainage paths. These developments, often carried out without proper permits or environmental assessments, obstruct the natural flow of water, leading to overflows and flash floods during heavy rainfalls.
Mr Speaker, we cannot continue to ignore the consequences of unregulated urban development any longer. It is essential that city planning authorities, traditional leaders, developers and community members work together to enforce zoning laws and protect environmentally sensitive areas.
Mr Speaker, as the Member of Parliament for the Adentan Constituency. I am committed to working closely with the Municipal Assembly, the Ghana Hydrological Services Department and NADMO and other relevant stakeholders to; identify and demolish illegal structures built on waterways; enhance and expand existing drainage infrastructure to accommodate the increasing volume of water runoff; educate the public on the environmental and safety impacts of improper construction and practices; promote sustainable urban development that considers long-term climate resilience and community safety. We are also calling on residents to support ongoing efforts by avoiding dumping refuse into drains and reporting any blocked or overflowing drainage systems to the authorities promptly.
Mr Speaker, this is a collective challenge that requires both Government commitment and community cooperation. We remain resolute in finding lasting solutions to this recurring problem and will continue to push for increased investment in resilient infrastructure for the Adentan Municipality.
Mr Speaker, I wish to extend our deepest condolences and sympathies to all affected individuals and families. Your safety and wellbeing are our top priority, therefore, let us come together to protect lives, property and the future of our constituency.
Mr Speaker, I thank you for this opportunity to make this Statement.
Hon Francis Asenso-Boakye
Bantama
Thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to comment on the Statement ably made by Mr Mohammed Adamu Ramadan, the fine gentleman from the Adentan Constituency.
Mr Speaker, the issue of flooding, as was experienced in the Adentan Constituency, resonates beyond Constituency boundaries. Indeed, it is a national issue. As a boy who grew up in an urban community of Bantama in Kumasi, and also an MP from an urban community, I am acutely aware of the challenges of flooding and its economic impacts.
Mr Speaker, the economic cost of flooding in our country is so huge that it undermines our development efforts as a country. When Dr Mahama Kabiru was speaking, he mentioned the fact that there are certain issues that should transcend beyond politics. One of such issues is flooding. As a former Minister for Works and Housing, I am very much aware of various interventions that Governments over the years have made towards the fight against flooding. In fact, during the period of President Akufo-Addo, investment in flood control measures alone was about GH₵600,000,000. That was unprecedented. No other Government had made such investments in flood control, apart from the regular drainage infrastructure.
Mr Speaker, we all know that there is inadequate drainage infrastructure in our country. Over the years, as I mentioned, over time Government continued to enhance the drainage infrastructure, but regardless of the investment we make in the drainage infrastructure, there are two key things that if we do not control, it will undermine the various interventions by Government to curb flooding in our country; that is unregulated urban development.
Mr Speaker, there is enough body of laws in our country to prevent unregulated development. The Local Government Act empowers the District Assemblies as the highest planning authorities in our country. Whenever a development is going to be made, whoever is going to initiate the development has to apply to the District Assemblies to make sure that there is a permit before the person can start the development, but what you see today is haphazard development all over and that is the main reason we are experiencing these flooding events.
So, I want to take this opportunity to urge the political actors as well as the Local Government officials to be up and doing and implement to the letter, the provisions as enshrined in the Local Government Act, that can help prevent flooding in our country. Another issue is also the haphazard disposal of waste. Everybody knows that when you put waste into our drainage channels, it blocks the way to the extent that when it rains and the water cannot find any other path to flow, it will just overflow into the communities and increase flooding but yet, people continue to dump waste into our drainage channels. We continue to blame Government, and we continue to blame the District Assemblies.
Mr Speaker, what are we also doing as citizens? I am urging a community action against this issue of flooding, because once the community comes together and prevents people from building on waterways and dumping solid waste into our drainage channels, we will go a long way in addressing this flooding issue.
Mr Speaker, there is power in community action, even more powerful than the power of government. If people come together, they can do a lot to protect our country.
So, Mr Speaker, I want to commend once again, Hon Mohammed Adamu Ramadan for coming out with measures that can help address this issue of flooding. But
there is no better measure than encouraging the citizenry not to sit on the fence, not to behave as spectators, but to behave as active participants, so that when they see that somebody is dumping solid waste into our drainage channels, or developing on waterways, they can report to the appropriate authority. It will go a long way in addressing this issue of flooding. Otherwise, the Government will continue to commit funds to build drainage infrastructure, and yet, our actions and inactions will undermine the effort of the Government.
So, this should not be politicised at all. We should see this as a national problem, and every Ghanaian must make an effort to take part in the fight against flooding in our country. With these few remarks, Mr Speaker, I want to once again commend Hon Mohammed Adamu Ramadan for this thoughtful and insightful Statement.
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
Hon Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah
Ho West
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, let me commend my Brother, the Member of Parliament for Adentan, for drawing the public’s attention to what has happened in Adenta recently.
Mr Speaker, I live in his constituency, and it is true that there was a flood. Some people, as I speak now, are being housed in some hotels, and we have to pay for those who are being housed in those hotels.
Mr Speaker, we have also been told that we have lost three lives, three precious lives, as a result of this downpour that has overflowed our drainage. I want to commend him because he has drawn our attention to the fact that one of the major causes of this perennial flooding of our drains is basically people taking the law into their own hands by building houses on waterways. Mr Speaker, how long can we come to this House and draw the attention of authorities that building houses on waterways is not allowed and is not permitted?
Mr Speaker, you will be surprised that the owners of these houses were given a licence or permit to put up houses. Who are those who give permits for the construction of apartments and houses on these waterways? It is our authorities, the municipal and the planning authorities. So, if someone has been given authority or a permit to put up a house on a waterway, and the person has decided to put up that house, it is not only the person who has put up the house who is culpable, but the planning authorities must also be held accountable.
That is why I am siding with him that the municipal planning officers, those who gave out permits to put up houses in legally acquired areas, should also be held accountable. In addition to that, those who do not acquire any permit before putting up the house should be taken to the court of law and sanctioned because three precious lives were lost as a result of somebody’s negligence and wickedness by putting a house on a waterway. Apart from that,
Mr Speaker, those of us in the built environment, from our profession, there are new ways of doing things. When one goes to the Netherlands—In Netherlands, there was reclamation, and they put up houses. So, why can our hydrological authorities not also come up with a new way? There is a new way of designing drainage. Now we have open drains.
How can we continue with open drains? Why can we not have closed drains? Because in his Statement, he said people were dumping debris and things in the gutters or drains, and that is what caused the choking. Can we have closed drains? And if one has a closed drain, it would only have a gully and one can use a rod to know whether it is clogged or not. But if we have open drains and continue designing and constructing open drains, people will by all means, with our level of education, dump debris in those gutters.
Mr Speaker, I want to plead with the Adenta municipality and all other municipalities that they should take their time when they want to give out permits to put up houses. And also, I agree with him that we should do rezoning. If we cannot go with a new way of doing things by constructing french drains or closed drains, then let us make sure that, before a permit is given, we do the right thing.
With these few words, Mr Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity, and also thank the maker of the Statement.
Hon Frank Annoh-Dompreh
Nsawam/Adoagyiri
Mr Speaker, let me try and be brief on the subject matter raised by my good Friend, the Hon Ramadan.
Mr Speaker, I could not agree more with Hon Asenso-Boakye, who says the matter replicates across the country. So even though our Colleague is limiting himself to his constituency, we may have to inflect and look at the effect of it across the country, especially now that we have the rains here. We have to look at it in a broader context, then we can prescribe solutions in that sense.
Hon Bedzrah, who I know is a professional in the built environment, has related to the issues well. I will try and categorise my observations in threefold. The first has to do with the separation of waste. Yes, Hon Bedzrah says we should have closed drains. Yes, we can have the closed drains, but that would take some time because of the exacting nature of it in terms of finance and the cost. But in the meantime, we should be able to separate our waste. We cannot justify why, as a country, we still—
In fact, globally, Africa is probably the only part of the world where we do not separate our waste. We lump the entire waste together, and as a result, it reduces our ability to process the waste or re-usage of the waste. So that is the matter, and it is so fundamental. We are also concretising our cities just like that. In every part of the city, we are putting concrete there. So, we do not have buffers. Once we do not have these buffers and it rains torrentially, then the flooding will be welcome news. It will be a matter of course.
Now, I think in Indonesia and other jurisdictions that I know of, the granting of building permits comes with the issuance of seedlings. So, when one is granted a building permit to put up a structure, one is given seedlings to plant, nurture, and ensure that the seedlings grow. So all over the cities, they have plants and vegetation consciously done. An industrialised country like Germany, there are a lot of greens in Berlin. These vegetations help in absorbing excess water and in the carbon sequestration equation. And thankfully, we have a very fertile land.
In any part of our country, if we plant, it will grow. We have had a number of projects: the CONTI Project, the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development (GARID) Project, the desilting, the provision of more drains, and for some of them, there are question marks on how the funds were used.
Mr Speaker, unless incrementally we improve, we cannot make a significant impact. The assemblies must have a role to play, and I cannot agree more with Mr Bedzrah when he says people at the assembly will grant permit — I am not saying all of them — Many of them will grant permit anyhow, and then it leads to destruction of properties and life, and these people go scot-free. Then we come back to the central Government and say that it should provide more funding for provision of drains. It will not happen. So, we must get our facts right. Ramsar sites are all being encroached upon. We are building on Ramsar sites, which are supposed to serve as natural buffers. The last time, I saw His Excellency the President on television questioning why Ramsar sites were being encroached upon. We have city authorities who are sitting idle.
Mr Speaker, I wish, in your wisdom, you could give some consequential directives, not because it is Adentan, because it has a significant ramification. The rains are here, and we should be seen to be planning and doing some things right before it gets out of hand.
Mr Speaker, if you agree with me, we should give some directives and expect the Minister for Works, Housing and Water Resources, and even the Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs and the relevant Committee, to do some work. We cannot lament on the Statement and just go and sleep, and I think that is a matter we should take in good strides.
Mr Speaker, in drawing the curtains, I think we should look at the granting of building permit; we should reduce the concretisation of our cities; we should help in the plantation of more trees and the assembly should be brought to book. We should deal with those who are not working; they should face the rigours of the law. The Minister for Works, Housing and Water Resources, and the Minister for Local Government, Chieftaincy and Religious Affairs should be brought into action, and something must be done. Because we cannot lament and just leave this matter to rest, and I implore you to give some consequential directives for us to take some further action, and the conversation can go on because now the rains are coming more. We are going to have more rains. The people of Adentan and other places that are prone to flooding will be at the mercy of the weather again.
So, in conclusion, I implore you to give some consequential directives on this subject matter because it goes beyond the borders of Adentan. I thank you.
Hon Maxwell Kwame Lukutor
South Tongu
Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity.
I must first of all share the condolences of the House to the people of Adentan, especially at the Lakeside area. Ironically, the area is lakeside. It means there is a lake, so it is unfortunate that people built so close to the lake, and some of these issues happen, and they are found wanting.
Let me also commend the Greater Accra Regional Minister for a good job done, especially at the Tema area, where she started demolishing some houses that were illegally built on the Ramsar site like the Hon Minority Chief Whip said. This is a holding area for excess water from the cities. It is because these days, we build so much everywhere, and there is concrete everywhere, and water does not seep into the soil, so it has to be held somewhere. Unfortunately, where it has to be held is where we also go to build.
On the issue about permitting, it will interest one to know that most of the people who do these illegal structures do not have permits to build where they build, and there are times that they engage in a lot of re-zoning activities. Re-zoning means that the place has been zoned for an open space or a green area where water can collect. But they are rezoned into industrial areas and sometimes, ironically, it is some powerful in society, the rich, our pastors, the politicians; anybody puts pressure on the district assemblies to be able to grant permits for some of these structures to be built.
So, when these things happen, the poor who have lived there earlier, bear the brunt of our dire need to want to fit in an already congested area. Most of us are not interested in going to the suburbs to build our structures. We want to build right in the city centre, where the place is already choked. Also, because our transport systems are not too good, everybody wants to live close to Parliament so that within 10 to 15 minutes, they can drive to Parliament instead of going to Adenta or Dawhenya or some outskirts to go and build on a fresh land. We want to fit ourselves into the already congested system. So, these are some of the causes that plague us.
We might not entirely blame the town planning people, because like I said earlier, sometimes, we ourselves put pressure on them to grant these permits and do the re-zoning, so these are the effects of some of the activities we invariably cause them to do. On the issue about the open and the closed drains, sometimes, it is because of our discharge of waste. It affects even the closed drains. On Saturday, I led a cleanup exercise in my community, Sogakope to be precise. When we lifted the covering of the drains, one cannot believe the amount of filth that was in the drains.
So, there were places that were covered completely. We were thinking of breaking through to see what was under because the filth choked the water, so that the water cannot even flow. In as much as we are advocating for closed drains to be constructed, we should also think about littering inactions. We litter
so much that all these drains get choked and water cannot flow. So, in as much as we sympathise with the people of Adentan and all other places that got flooded during these rains, we are expecting more. I saw some buildings in Adentan and the water is at the roof level.
I asked, how could that happen? Water at the roof level? It is even more than what happened during the spillage of the Akosombo Dam to the people of Mepe. It is so unfortunate, and in as much as we are bringing these things to bear, let us also look at the actions we take as people. People who build should know that there is a rainy day and when it comes, we are going to be affected.
With these few words, I want to thank my Colleague, Mr Ramadan, for making this Statement but is becoming a ritual. Every year on TV and in this House, we keep talking about flooding anytime it rains, and it looks like we are not taking positive actions to be able to reverse the situation. I just heard the former Minister for Works and Housing saying that there were unprecedented actions taken. The question is, what has it resulted into? So, let us sit at the round table again and look at very pragmatic efforts that we have to take as a people of this country to make sure that, next year, we do not come to this same House to lament, complain, call people to order, and at the end of the day, nothing happens.
With these few words, I want to commend you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity. Thank you so much.
AskParly