There are several civil engineering plans for Ghana’s capital put together by technocrats, but the plans are resting on the shelves of decision-makers and implementers, President of the Ghana Institute of Planners, Alfred Kwesi Opoku, has lamented.
According to him, planners have done their work by drafting plans for Accra to meet international standards, but if the implementers do not put the plans to use, the efforts and resources that went into the compilation of the plans will go to waste.
Accra has become the subject of discussion in the country lately following the recurrence of devastating floods.
About 150 people died on June 3, 2015, in a twin flood and fire disaster during the rainy season. An explosion at a GOIL fuel station during a similar downpour consumed many people, who had crowded for shelter from the rains and floods there.
Several stakeholders have attributed the floods to unauthorised structures built on waterways in the capital.
Speaking on TV3’s Consumer Watch programme on Sunday June 12, Mr Opoku said: “I want to quote one of my directors, the AMA Town and Country Planning director: ‘…Accra is well planned, but not well built.’
“You are talking about the technocrat’s aspects of planning that ‘this should be put here, that should be put there and all that, then we have no problem.’
“You can go and check at the Town and Country Planning [Department]… if there is no plan then you blame the technocrats, who should prepare the ground… but after you have done that what happens next?
“The next thing is that they [plans] must be implemented, there must be money to support the implementers [and] reinforcement.”
He added: “So, we find outside that after racking all the brains that we have and having been paid at the end of the month, your work is left on the shelves.”
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