The North Tongu Member of Parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has asked the Volta River Authority (VRA) and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), to speed up support efforts to alleviate the plight of the victims of the Akosombo Dam spillage.
Although the VRA and NADMO have offered relief items such as mattresses, blankets, various food items, clothes, and toiletries to communities affected by the spillage of water from the Akosombo and Kpong Dam, Mr Ablakwa says a lot more is needed.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Top Story on Tuesday, October 17, the MP said the “relief items are coming in too slow on the part of NADMO and VRA.”
“The response rate has been too slow…I don’t know what the bottlenecks are whether it is funding, but we should be doing better than we are doing now. We need more tents, we need more food items,” he said.
“We were promised a number of tents but they haven’t met that target yet and so people are still congested in classrooms and we have to do something about that,” he added.
According to him, the situation would have been dire if not for the donations coming in from private individuals and groups.
He said there is a need for the situation to be declared as a state of emergency, adding that it will trigger a lot of international support.
“A number of diplomats have reached out that it is all they are waiting for,” he noted.
Already, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God Church, Ghana, Reverend Stephen Wengam has also joined the calls for such an action.
In a news conference, he noted that declaring a state of emergency would add to the necessary legislative and humanitarian weight to measures undertaken to bring the depressing situation under control.
“We are witnessing a flood and disaster on an epic scale and with devastating consequences in the parts of the Volta, Eastern and Greater Accra regions as a result of the spillage of huge volumes of water from the Akosombo and Kpong Dams.
“It bears recounting that entire communities have been submerged in the floodwaters. Thousands of people including children have been displaced and property with millions of Ghana cedis lost. To make the desperate humanitarian situation worse, public cemeteries and toilets have also been submerged in floods, thus polluting sources of drinking water and igniting public health emergency concerns.
“This catastrophe of unprecedented proportions calls for a response of unparalleled urgency,” he explained.
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