‘Pre-colonial open drains cause of perennial floods’ – Housing Minister

Ghana’s Minister for Works and Housing, Samuel Atta Akyea says the architecture and construction of open drains that he described as ‘pre-colonial’ is the cause of the perennial floods that hit the country.

Addressing the press over the week, Mr. Atta Akyea corrected that drains and sewage systems per standards, are to be sub-terranean.

“A world class engineering requires that drainage systems of a country should be sub-terranean- what that means is that, it should be underground as opposed open gutters. Ghana has primarily constructed open lanes, pre-colonial. And since Nkrumah’s days, open gutters have brought us more evil than good because of our sub-culture of emptying all the garbage in our homes into the open, old and antiquated channels, to the effect that they do not aid sewage flows”, he explained. 

Mr. Atta Akyea disclosed that government has expended huge sums of monies on desilting and construction of drains.