‘Adhere to building bye-laws to prevent floods’
The
perennial flooding in Accra can only be reduced if developers adhere to the
country’s building by-laws which permit that only 40 per cent of a parcel of
land be developed, the President of the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE),
Mr Kwaku Boampong, has said.
According
to him, the concrete surfacing of homes instead of natural vegetation coupled
with lack of rain-water harvesting increased the risk of floods.
“In the
building by-laws, you are not permitted to develop more than 40 per cent of
your plot area. Not more than 40 per cent of your plot area should be covered but
people sometimes cover even 100 per cent,” he told the Daily Graphic on
the fringes of the annual Engineering Week celebration in Accra last Tuesday.
Concrete
surfaces
In most
of the offices in Accra, concrete surfaces and terrazzo were all over the
compounds, observed Mr Boampong, and added that “with the slightest of rains,
the drains get filled and then run into storm drains and the next thing you
know there is flooding.”
“Resilient
and sustainable Infrastructure —The Role of Civilian and Military Engineers,”
is the theme for the week-long event that is bringing together engineers across
Ghana and parts of Africa to deliberate on how the profession could play a
pivotal role in growth and development and also encourage a working
relationship between engineers in the military and their civilian counterparts.
The GhIE
president said there was the need “to control the way we manage water in our
storm drains. Nature has its own way of recycling it if we build properly, and
that reduces the amount of water that runs through our drains”.
Waste
management
The guest
of honour for the occasion, Prof. Kwabena Frimpong Boateng, a former Chief
Executive of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, observed that the country would
continue to struggle with its development unless serious attention was paid to
waste management.
He also
called for a policy that allowed students from technical institutions to work
at constructions sites not just for experience but also document their
knowledge to help the country bridge its knowledge gap.
The Chief
of Defence Staff, Air Marshall Michael Samson-Oje, welcomed the collaboration
between the military and civilian engineers to push the country’s development
agenda.
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