The Klottey-Korle MP, Dr. Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, has questioned the lack of progress following the 2019 approval of a $200 million credit facility to implement the Greater Accra Resilient and Integrated Development Project.
Ahead of the seven-year anniversary of the June 3 fire and flood disaster, the MP intimated that Ghana had not learned lessons from the tragedy that claimed at least 150 lives.
“We are in May [2022] and the flooding is worse now in some parts. Two years after the funding was approved in Parliament, we are still waiting for the project to be executed as promised,” Dr. Agyeman-Rawlings said in Parliament on Thursday.
The fire and explosion took place at a petrol station near the Kwame Nkrumah circle, in the constituency Dr. Agyeman-Rawlings came to represent in Parliament two years later.
At the time of the explosion, people in the area were trying to cope with heavy rain and flooding.
The flooding caused diesel and petrol to flow away from the gas station, and fire from a nearby house led to the explosion.
As part of the intervention to prevent flooding in Accra, Parliament approved the $200 million credit facility to improve flood risk management and solid waste management in the Odaw River Basin of the Greater Accra Region and improve access to basic infrastructure and services in the targeted communities within the basin.
Dr. Agyeman-Rawlings called on the government to immediately mobilise resources to deal with perennial flooding, especially the Odawna catchment area.
“I hope that whatever resources can be mobilised to support the affected persons and start the engineering work will improve and maybe prevent the kind of disasters that we’ve seen,” the MP said.
