Demolition of buildings on waterways now is wrong – Bureau of Public Safety

The Bureau of Public Safety has described President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s instruction to the Municipal, Metropolitan, and District Assemblies (MMDCEs) to demolish buildings on water ways as knee jerk.

He said the set up of of a monitoring committee at the Jubilee House a waste of taxpayers’ money.

In an interview with Alfred Ocansey on 3FM Sunrise Morning Show on Thursday 26 May, 2022 the Technical Lead for Built Environment at the Bureau of Public Safety, Sampson Deklu said “We seem to be knee-jerking with critical situations in Ghana. We should have been managing the flood waters by now because the volume of rain water has increased instead of demolishing buildings because floods happen everywhere in the world”.

He expressed that rendering people homeless in order to solve the problem is simply creating another problem while the authorities could have been proactive by preventing such buildings from being constructed on the water ways.

President Akufo-Addo has charged all Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to lead in the demolition of all unauthorized structures built on waterways.

He gave this directive during an unveiling ceremony and commissioning of two new IHC Beaver 50 dredgers and marine equipment for Dredge Masters Limited a subsidiary of the Jospong Group of Companies at Adjei Kojo in Ashaiman, Accra on Wednesday, May 25, 2022,

The President further warned that any MMDCE who fails to carry out this exercise across the country would be held accountable.

The Bureau observed that it is a series of issues and a series of public safety concerns that we seem to always be knee jerking on. Because knowing that a building is being constructed on a water way, the Assembly should have quickly moved in to demolish it even before the rains started coming.

“Our authorities need to be up and doing, they have been reluctant for a long and it is costing us a lot. Now that the President is saying they should demolish the buildings, the question is where are those people going to stay in this rainy season? People are being carried away and properties are being destroyed and we are in May so what will happen in June July when the rain intensifies as the Meteorological Agency is telling us? ” he inquired

Mr. Sampson Deklu opined that, if the Assemblies who are paid with taxpayers’ money were working, the government wouldn’t have had to spend more money to embark on demolishing exercise and set up another committee at the Jubilee House to monitor an already monitoring system.

“It is just a duplication of duties and institutions to waste taxpayers’ money. Whatever committee or unit has been set up at the Jubilee House is going to do what job? What is the sector minister’s job? What are our Assemblies’ engineers supposed to be doing?” he quizzed

The Bureau of Public Safety further cautioned individuals and land owners to desist from building on lands that are designated as buffer areas demarcated to hold water and check floods.

Source: 3news.com|Ghana