Germany steps up support for flood victims

Accra, Oct. 9, GNA - The German Embassy in Accra announced on Tuesday that it has so far given a total of about 510,000 Euros to support Ghana's flood affected areas.

A statement issued in Accra said the German Embassy gave a cheque for 50,000 Euros to the National Catholic Secretariat for the immediate distribution of food supplies while the German Federal Agency for Technical Relief had deployed a team of eight experts from the Agency's Rapid Deployment Unit Water Supply (SEEWA) in order to clean and restore some 130 wells in the Builsa District of the Upper East Region at the cost of about 100,000 Euros.

It said water samples would be examined in the team's mobile laboratory, adding that this essential service was also available to other relief organisations.

The Embassy said Ghanaian personnel would be trained in well/borehole cleaning to continue with the rehabilitation of wells/boreholes in other districts.

It said the Federal Ministry for Cooperation and Development had donated 250,000 Euros to the World Food Programme and given 85,000 Euros to a project undertaken by World Vision to supply mattresses, blankets, cooking utensils, mosquito nets and gas lamps to the flood victims. The Embassy said in addition, the German Catholic Agency Misereor had donated 25,000 Euros to the victims.

Interior Minister, Mr Kwamena Bartels said on Monday that 56 deaths had been recorded so far. He said 31 occurred in Upper East, 15 in the Northern Region, 10 in Upper East, but no death was recorded in the Western Region.

According to him 341,360 persons were displaced - 100,703 in the Upper East,228,812 in Northern Region, 3,033 in the Upper West and 8,812 in the Western region.

Over 34,878 houses, the Minister said, had been destroyed. Upper East Region recorded 15,069; Northern Region had 18,167; Upper West recorded 1,100 while 582 houses were destroyed in the Western Region. He said a total of 131 trunk and feeder roads with a total length of 1,510 kilometres had been damaged whereas 70 bridges and culverts were also affected. Some 70,526 hectares with the production potential of 144,430 metric tonnes were also affected.

Mr Bartels noted that Government had so far approved 610,000 Ghana cedis (6.1 billion cedis) for the acquisition of additional emergency relief items to supplement the National Disaster Management Organisation's (NADMO) Strategic Reserve.