Editorial: Terminal 3 flood disgraceful

The annual ritual of floods in Accra has really become overwhelming. The horrendous havoc of the rains continues to show how punctured our garments of leadership have become.
Nature blesses us with rains, but it becomes a disaster because we are a people notoriously irresponsible.

Fact is that in any society where laws and systems are dysfunctional, human beings behave like animals, and that is what has become the lot of residents of Accra, the capital city of our dear nation.

That is why we generate garbage and dump same into the poor drainage systems we have in the city.
We do so because we have developed the dead goat syndrome and simply forget that the rains will come again and we will suffer the consequences of our irresponsible behaviour. We do so because our laws do not bite.

Sadly, the annual floods also make a mockery of the leadership of successive presidents of the Fourth Republic, who usually tickle themselves and boast of their achievements. The bitter truth is that during Rawlings’ 19 years in office, Accra recorded floods several times.

In the same way, floods did occur repeatedly in the years of former President Kufuor, the late President Mills and was particularly worse under President Mahama, who saw as many as 152 lives perish on June 3, 2015, when Accra experienced an unprecedented flash flood event, coupled with an explosion at a GOIL filling station close to the Kwame Nkrumah Circle.

The situation has not changed under the current leadership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.
Even though past governments have attempted to put in measures to reduce the impact of the floods, those measures are at best ad hoc. They barely endure the waters.

And so, it came as no surprise that after last Monday’s floods, the President, like all his predecessors, decided to tour some parts of the Greater Accra Region to inspect ongoing works aimed at reducing flooding in the capital.

However, what did come as a huge surprise to everybody was the news that parts of the flagship Terminal 3 project at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) was flooded after Monday’s floods.

The project, which is a design-and-build concept undertaken by Turkish construction company Mapa Construction MNG Holding (Mapa İnşaat ve Ticaret), cost the taxpayer a whopping $400 million, and it is surprising that after only a few months of operation (it was opened to traffic in August 2018) such a major default should be noticed.

Even though managers of the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL) are tight-lipped over the issue, insiders strongly believe the flooding is linked to an engineering problem for which the contractors are liable.

Whatever it is, The Finder demands that action is taken immediately to save the nation from international embarrassment.

Source: The Finder