Kaneshie residents scared of possible cholera outbreak

Accra, June 22, GNA - Some residents at Kaneshie, a suburb of Accra, on Monday expressed fear of a possible outbreak of cholera in the area, following last Friday's heavy downpour which has deposited refuse into many homes. The GNA news team learnt this when it visited some residents and workers at the area to assess the extent of damage caused by the two-hour torrential rain.

A resident accused some indiscreet individuals who habitually threw rubbish and human excreta into gutters and in front of uncompleted houses in the area.

The sight of the knee-level stockpile of rubbish strewn over some 300 metres on the street as well as the horde of houseflies hovering around at the back of the Kaneshie Taxi Rank and other places was sickening enough to send people spitting.

The man expressed the fear that if Zoomlion, a private waste company, did

not visit the area to clear the rubbish, residents would be at the mercy of any

outbreak of cholera. Police Superintendent Iddrissu Abu Yakubu, District Commander of the Kaneshie Police Station, was of the opinion that the indiscriminate littering of waste materials at Kaneshie in particular and Accra in general was the cause of the Friday's flood. "It is hard for me to believe those two hours that the rain fell was so heavy and devastating enough to have caused this havoc," he said pointing rather to the dumping of refuse into drainage system, on the part of some, as the cause. Miss Eileen Torto, Headmistress of Sophia Memorial School, who has

ordered a one-week closure of the school following the flood, cautioned

residents against throwing waste materials into the drains. "We need not wait for somebody to clean our environment for us," she advised, saying "if we had cleaned our environment and desilted our gutters, this flood would not have taken lives and destroyed properties running into millions of cedis." She disclosed that the flood which entered the school premises destroyed the

classroom furniture, computers, exercise and textbooks worth over GH¢3,000. As a safety measure to avert any future flood disaster, she said management

of the school was considering the possibility of constructing strong elevated sheds to store items such as computers, text and exercise books. The news team spotted some shop owners busily scooping the water that had entered their shops while others were mopping the floor and cleaning their items. Ms Goodness Okoye, a Nigerian phone dealer, told GNA she had lost items worth more than GH¢5,000 to the rain.

She said when she came to the shop on Sunday morning to assess the condition she found the dead body of a man washed to the entrance by the flood. Kwame Obuor, a fridge mechanic who was dumfounded and was trying to come to terms with what had happened, described the flood as "mysterious" adding that it had destroyed his fridge motors worth GH¢3,000. At the Headquarters of the Metro Mass Transit at Kaneshie, Mr Stephen Yeboah, the Human Resource Manager, said the chest level flood destroyed items worth more than GH¢10,000.

The items destroyed included office furniture, stationery, official documents and computers. He said the water entered some 50 of the parked buses diluting the diesel fuel. "We have called on GOIL, which are our suppliers, to assist us drain out the contaminated underground diesel," he added.

Mr Yeboah appealed to the government to find a lasting solution to the problems caused by the perennial rains. Mr William Offei Manukure, a Dispatch Officer of the company, said he and other colleagues held each others' hands to wade across the flood to safety 15 minutes into the downpour that Friday evening. Heavy downpour on Friday evening destroyed properties running into several thousands of cedis and killed at least seven in the west of Accra.