Tamale Choked Gutters And The Coming Rains: Anything to Worry About?

The rains are here again and very soon, residents of the Tamale Metropolis, some of whom still have fresh memories of that BLACK THURSDAY of 28^th June, 2012, would definitely start dreading of another catastrophic rainstorm and flood disaster.

On the said day, there was a severe cyclonic rainfall that led to a flood disaster in the somewhat poorly planned metropolis, which residential areas have been heavily engulfed with filth due to the lazy attitude of most of the people. The disaster affected private homes and public buildings as well as other properties. 

The National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) in collaboration with the Assembly and the Metropolitan Directorate of the Ghana Education Service did some assessment after it rained “elephants and bulls”, and it emerged that over 30 suburbs and communities of the city, most of which fall under the dirtiest vicinities, were seriously affected. Roofings of buildings were ripped-off while some collapsed. Personal belongings of some people were also carried away in areas which got virtually flooded.

The assessment also revealed that 2, 721 people were affected consisting of 811 adult males, 766 adult females, male and female children 1, 144. A total of 1, 820 people were displaced with 761 houses affected and 5,338 rooms involved. Two persons died whereas 5 basic schools were affected with cost of rehabilitation of these schools estimated to be around GH¢39,320.10.   

This was the second major disaster to have occurred in the metropolis after the 2007 rainstorm disaster that was estimated to cost around GH¢3 million cedis. The government at the time said it could not provide that amount of money in the form of relief assistance, because if it did, the economy of the country, in the words of the former president who went to sympathise with victims of the flood, could be dislocated. 

To some extent, the government was right considering the fact that we residents contributed towards the occurrence of that flood through indiscriminate and reckless waste disposal in drains and other waterways. But funny enough, the government was able to allocate US$20million for the celebration of 50years of nationhood. An insensitive government, isn’t it?

Why did the flood occur?

About 60 percent of the entire city does not have drainage systems or gutters and as a result, anytime the slightest rain occurred, residential areas located around serious waterlogged areas experience flooding. 

Besides, even residential areas where there are gutters, most of them are heavily choked as a result of residents’ wanton disregard for good environmental practices and often resort to throwing solid waste into these gutters instead of disposing them off at public waste collection sites.

These choked gutters do not only produce a horrible smell, but they also serve as fertile breeding grounds for mosquitoes and other flies, which sometimes lead to severe cholera outbreak. 

Once the cleanest city in Ghana, Tamale is now a growing slum and this is due to the poor waste management attitude of the Assembly officials coupled with the absence of the spirit of communal labour amongst residents, thus painting a dire picture for the entire metropolis.

Consistently, litterbins along most principal streets within the metropolis have been stolen by some unscrupulous individuals and turned into domestic waste containers in their homes whereas some use them to fetch water.

As we approach the first anniversary of the 2012 flood disaster, similar disasters that occurred in February and March early this year should serve as early warning signals to city officials. Nonetheless, it is incumbent on city officials to perhaps begin a door-to-door campaign in the various homes of the city to encourage residents to clean and desilt all the choked gutters in their neighbourhood in order to avoid another humanitarian crisis this year.

The Ghana Urban Roads should also stop awarding the desilting of choked gutters on contract to political party foot soldiers who do not do it well due to lack of capacity and perhaps, consider giving such contracts to the Zoomlion Ghana Limited which has the capacity to deliver.

Officials of the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly should also seriously consider sealing all open drains and those yet to be constructed although it’s expensive, so that they can avoid the situation whereby residents living close to such gutters throw solid waste into them.

Lastly, the bye-law on waste management and sanitation should be strictly enforced in order to get rid of filth in the city particularly residential areas which fall outside the jurisdiction of Zoomlion Ghana Limited.  If we are able to do the aforementioned, it would save the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly the GH¢2.5million Ghana cedis it spends every year on sanitation and waste management.

Peasant Farmers Call For Enforcement Of Anti-Bushfire Law

Rainfall figures in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone of Ghana in recent years have taken a nosedive, sparking anxiety among residents particularly smallholder or peasant farmers in that part of the country.

For instance, the average rainfall figures between 2004 and 2010 according to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture had been 1243.24, 1066.79, 822.50, 672.61, 829.89, 865.44 and 364.85 millimetres, respectively.

Amongst the contributory factors attributed to this development, bushfires tops the chart as being one of the leading sources of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission aside the excessive use of fossil fuels in auto mobiles, industrial machines, among others which are all a threat to the ozone layer.

The aforementioned activities, also affect the natural environment (ecosystems), agriculture, human health, forests and game reserves, water sources, among others due to the negative role CO2 play in changing weather patterns or climatic conditions. The worse outcomes of these effects include torrential rainfall (severe devastating floods), drought, outbreak of epidemics, high temperatures, influx of pest and rising sea levels.

A recent survey conducted by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) on climate change effects showed that weather temperatures in Ghana could rise by one degree celsius and rainfall and runoff water could also sharply reduce thus affecting the yields of cereals and other food crops. This, certainly, would not augur well for over 60 percent of residents of the three regions of the North – Upper West, Upper East and Northern Regions, who depended mainly on subsistence agriculture and of course, were the major producers of a bulk of the country’s required cereals.

Annual devastating bushfires in Northern Ghana usually begins in the month of November and intensifies in December to February. The practice usually result in the destruction of not only vegetation cover, but also both harvested and non harvested farm produce, thereby causing food insecurity among the already impoverished Northern rural communities.

In view of this, the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana (PFAG) in collaboration with the Business Sector Advocacy Fund organized a stakeholders’ workshop in Tamale to find lasting ways of dealing with perennial bushfires which is the number one enemy to farmers in the Northern Savannah Ecological Zone.

The President of PFAG Adam Mohammed Nashiru in an address noted that, throughout the country bushfires had exacted a heavy toll of loss and unquantifiable suffering on farmers as per their engagement in crop and livestock production, stressing that the effects had equally had an adverse impact on the natural environment.

He acknowledged that there were several factors that caused bushfires citing for instance hunters, cigarette smokers, herdsmen, charcoal producers and among others; however, some of them he stressed, if not properly checked could cause serious damage to agriculture or the environment. Adding, he also emphasised that although bushfires occurred in both the forest and savannah areas, they were not as frequent and extensive as in the savannah zone.

According to Mr. Nashiru, the difficulties of eliminating bushfires completely means that there was the need for a clear understanding of the causes and effects of bushfires so that bushfire policies or laws could address the undesirable effects on arable agriculture, soil conservation, livestock and wildlife.

He posited that although bushfires had played some role in agricultural production and in accelerating environmental degradation especially in the fragile savannah ecosystems, this issue was largely ignored in decisions affecting the environment compared to tropical deforestation and desertification that had received considerable attention in environmental discussions.

He explained that, like many hazardous phenomena that occurred occasionally, bushfires that appeared as headlines in mass media reports during the dry season seemed to be forgotten when the risk disappears with the onset of rains. Consequently, he observed that, there was very little in the form of published data and information concerning the frequency, intensity, duration and effects of bushfires on the environment and human welfare in the country.

However, Mr. Nashiru stated that the indiscriminate burning of bushes as a result of the lack of enforcement of the anti-bushfire laws by Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies did not only destroy the ecology, but also regrettably, destroyed acres of farm crops and deprived livestock from grazing during the dry season.

Thus, at the end of the workshop, participants agreed that there was the need for MMDAs to implement PNDC Law 229 on Control and Prevention of Bushfires Act, 1990 which stipulates that, there shall be established within the area of authority of a District Assembly within three months of coming into force of the Act, a bushfire control sub-committee of the Executive Committee of the Assembly.

They also thought the anti-bushfire mandate of the Ghana National Fire Service and their Community Fire Volunteers should be emphasised.

Again, participants were emphatic that planners and decision-makers must pay more attention to preventive measures rather than curative measures. Penalties for abusing fire prevention and control laws, they said, ought to be harsh to serve as a deterrent to others.

PFAG is made up of peasant farmers across the length and breadth of Northern Ghana. It was formed in 2005 and has a total membership of 6000 comprising 1500 females and 4500 males. It is headquartered in Accra and has a zonal office in Tamale catering for the Northern sector of Ghana.

 

Poor Performance Of Schools In Savelugu-Nanton Municipality

Stakeholders in the educational sector in the Savelugu-Nanton Municipality of the Northern Region of Ghana, have been urged to play their supervisory role effectively in order to reverse the growing trend of low enrolment and retention of pupils and poor performance of schools in the area.

According to a report by the Ghana Education Service (GES) in the Municipality, 22 Junior High Schools were presented for the 2012 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and out of that figure, 15 schools scored below 40 percent representing 68.20 percent of the overall figure.

Some of the underlying causes attributed to the poor performance of the schools included candidates lack of adequate understanding of simple concepts in their subject areas; incomplete coverage of syllabus/loss of contact hours; weak foundation at the primary level; poor attitude of teachers towards work; lack of standardized mode of assessment to track schools performances and high level of truancy among BECE candidates after registration.

Others were inappropriate use of instructional hours by teachers; lack of parental supervision and monitoring of children’s learning behavior; negative peer influence; inadequate or poor supervision of schools by GES officials as well as mass promotion of pupils to the next class at the end of academic years.

Speaking at a sensitization workshop organized by Bibir Ghana in Savelugu, the Director of Human Resource Management at the GES Chief Mahama Abubakari, also cited frequent teacher absenteeism/lateness to school; loss of professional ethics including poor teacher-parent-community relations; non-preparation of scheme work/lesson plans; and non-observation of schools performance and appraisal meetings, among others as contributory factors for poor performance of schools in the area.

Participants at workshop

Chief Mahama stated that until it became compulsory for parents to enroll their wards in school and also took care of their learning materials and uniforms whilst government and its stakeholders such as PTAs, SMCs and GES ensured enrolment levels were improved and sustained, logistics supplied and teachers performance assessed and monitored regularly, schools would continue to record poor performances every year.

He charged PTAs and SMCs to own schools in their localities and monitor the attendance of pupils likewise teachers to ensure that everybody was performing their roles effectively. Adding, he emphasised that teachers who have been provided with accommodation in their schools should try and stay there instead living in town and commuting everyday to and fro school.    

Under the theme: “Supporting Basic Education In Communities of Northern Ghana; The Role of Stakeholders”, the workshop brought together Parent Teacher Associations, School Management Committees and Teachers of some ten selected basic schools in the Savelugu-Nanton Municipality whose academic performances in recent years appeared to be dwindling. 

It was aimed at building the capacities of these stakeholders on how to identify some of the negative factors confronting quality education delivery in their various communities and schools and find lasting solutions to those challenges. By this, participants were encouraged to play effective collaborative roles by ensuring that community members including parents and chiefs monitor the work of teachers by visiting schools and give them support as and when it was necessary while teachers too, could visit homes of pupils who do not turn up for school.

The workshop which was part of the implementation of a project by Bibir dubbed “Supporting Basic Education in The Communities of Northern Ghana” with funding from Intervida, would also provide beneficiary schools with learning materials.

According to the Executive Director of Bibir, Joseph Charles Osei, in-service training would also be organized for teachers who teach core mathematics, English and Integrated Science.

About 260 pupils, he said, would be registered under the National Health Insurance Scheme whilst those whose card had expired would have theirs renewed. “In addition to this, we’ll donate bursaries such as sandals, exercise books, school bags and other learning materials to pupils of the various schools”, he disclosed.

Mr. Osei observed that if stakeholders shirked their responsibilities, there would be continuous poor performance of schools in the Northern sector and charged them to live up to expectation.

Group picture after workshop

About Bibir-Ghana

Bibir-Ghana, a local NGO based in Tamale has its operational areas in the Tamale Metropolitan and Tolon/Kumbungu Districts. Established in 2005, the organization works with mainly women and children in deprived communities. The emphasis is on giving children a good environment and health to enable them gain access to formal education so as to be the motor of change in society. It is because of its support for children that a local name “BIBIR” which literally means children in Dagaare, was chosen to enable many people understand what the organization stand for. Since children can either be direct beneficiaries through the distribution of school materials, they can also be indirect beneficiaries through the empowerment of their mothers. Once the women are empowered, the children's education can be sustained.

GMA Strike Action: Upper East Sits On Keg Of Gunpowder

Doctors and pharmacists in the Upper East Region have agreed to back out of the ongoing nationwide strike action declared by the leadership of the Ghana Medical Association (GMA).

But the region is sitting on a keg of gunpowder which might explode anytime soon to kill its joy. This is because the non-striking physicians and chemists, though they say the decision to stay back at post is in the interest of an extremely deprived region, have also hinted that the grace period will gradually fade off if their demands are not met in time.

Another fearsome development which is already forecasting its shadow is the pharmacists’ ripening threat to join the strike bandwagon anytime soon— an afterthought yet to creep into the mind’s eye of the doctors says Dr. Peter Baffoe, Medical Superintendent of the Regional Hospital, in an interview with this blogger in Bolgatanga: “Conscious of the effect of the [strike] action, we have put some measures in place especially for emergency cases as well as maternal and child health issues. We only pray and hope that the strike does not linger for long.”

An attempt by this correspondent to talk to the head and some staff members of the Pharmacy Department at the hospital was met with concrete walls of hostile rebuff. Later, some staff members anonymously told this correspondent that the pharmacists at the facility were angry “and could have pounced on you” because the decision to pull out of the nationwide strike action was imposed on them from above.

Dr. Baffoe, again, says meetings are underway between the pharmacist body and the Regional Health Directorate on their grievances. The outcome of the meetings will determine the path the patients will take, he stated.

A walk round departments and wards by this paper can confirm that the hospital has remained as busy as a beehive. Doctors and their inseparable partners in pharmacy are at post and attending to a mammoth turnout of patients in what is supposed to be a nationwide strike affair.

Mr. Ali Anaba, a patient who just came out of a ward, told me he had a quality time with his doctor, and he was fine— very fine. A tall, dark-skinned mother in a long queue at the Out-Patients Department (OPD), Joyce Asumaka, said she had retrieved her baby’s folder from the records department and was confident she would enter the consulting room in no time with her sleeping little one.

The doctor-patient ratio in the region has been one to thirty-six thousand, and nurse-patient ratio: one to two thousand and fifty. Any prolonged period of such strike action would only detonate a keg of gunpowder on the ‘shelterless’ heads of patients in the region.

Police, Fire And Assembly Officials Brutalise Metro TV Cameramen

Officers of the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana National Fire Service as well as officials from the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly have subjected two Metro TV cameramen to what many observers say is yet another vicious attack on press freedom.

The two cameramen, Abdulai Issaka and Bashiru Issaka, were caught in crossfire when the assembly led the officers in a revenue mobilisation exercise on the streets within the municipality.

Early this month, the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly launched a surprise exercise to mobilise revenue from defaulting owners of shops and signposts. To ensure that the operation was a success, the assembly accompanied its mobilisation team with the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana National Fire Service to deal with the much-anticipated public resistance.

The operation on the first day saw a number of stores locked up and scores of signposts either uprooted or flattened. As expected, some shop owners resisted, armed with documents to prove they did not owe the assembly. But the team, which apparently was not prepared to listen to explanations, still found some faults as enough reasons to penalise storekeepers and signpost owners.

For example, traders who had extended the eavesdrops of their shops by a finger’s length just to avoid the disturbing rain splash and sunrays were asked to pay spot fines ranging between seventy Ghana cedis and one hundred Ghana cedis or have their stores bolted with colossal padlocks from the Assembly’s ‘blacksmiths’.

To worsen matters for traders who had no roaming cash on them, the team also insisted on ready notes, not cheque. Some traders resisted, claiming that the extra demands imposed by the Assembly officials were not part of the Assembly’s bye-laws. But they were matched with brute force from the Police and the Fire Service officers. One of the brutalised traders had his teeth removed in the struggles whilst some shops were completely destroyed. Some stores were locked up without pity for the perishable items in them.

When two Metro TV cameramen, Abdulai Issaka and Bashiru Issaka, focused their camera on a scene in which the officers were dragging one of the traders on the ground to their vehicle, they were subjected to physical assault. Bashiru Issaka escaped the hit of a sledge hammer from one of the angry-looking Fire Service officers, but had his camera crushed and seized. The tape inside the camera, which also contained some important news materials about a schoolboy who jumped to his death from a four-storey building at the Bolgatanga Technical Institute and other sensitive items, was also destroyed.

The development attracted some veteran journalists as well as the Upper East Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association, Mr. Eric Amoh, to the scene.

In an interview with this writer, Mr. Dominic Abakuri, a medical consultant, said even though he presented all documents to the team to show that his medical centre did not owe the assembly, his explanation was brushed aside and he was wrongly accused.

“Since the team insisted on locking up my office, I only decided to go for my car key and money which were inside the office. They wouldn’t allow me. I only had a body contact with one of the police officers and they held it against me as a crime,” he narrated after he had been dragged to the police vehicle not any less than a criminal guilty of the charge pressed against him.

“Why should they [the Assembly] charge me as much as one hundred Ghana cedis (Gh¢100) just for extending my roof to protect the door to my shop from rain?” asked Mr. Richard Anim, one of the affected businessmen. “And why are they insisting on cash, not cheque?” he pressed.

Some aggrieved-looking businesswomen who spoke to this paper said they could not help wondering if the sour twist to the revenue collection exercise was the “e dey bee keke” campaign promise trumpeted by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) on the road to the 2012 victory— or the team from the Assembly “was just doing its own thing”.

The two Metro TV cameramen are yet to recover from the neck and chest pains suffered from the brutality suffered in the crossfire. The whereabouts of the crushed camera and the tape is not known and an overdose of efforts to glean a reaction from the Municipal Chief Executive for Bolga, Mr. Edward Ayagle, has proved abortive.

The Upper East Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Bright Oduro, who was not in the region at the time, assured this writer in a telephone interview of thorough investigations into the incident.