The Director of Urban Roads, Alhaji Abbas Aworlu has rejected claims that the ongoing construction works at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle is the cause of the recurrent flooding in the area.
According to him, “the construction works at circle has no direct relationship to flooding within that catchment area.”
Heavy rains on Sunday caused flooding at the Kwambe Nkrumah Circle for the second time, barely two weeks after a similar incident which also triggered a fire outbreak that killed over 90 people on the spot.
Some Ghanaians are blaming the state of the ongoing road project in the area for flooding.
The Accra Metropolitan Assembly had desilted the Odaw River to allow free flow of rainwater.
Odaw River cause of Circle flooding
Speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show on Monday, the Director of Urban Roads, Abbas Aworlu argued that the construction of an interchange at Circle will among other things “improve the drainage systems within the area,” but lamented that “the main challenge of the Kwame Nkrumah Circle is the Odaw River.”
“The Odaw River is a main outfall for a lot of drainage systems within that part of Accra. Once the Odaw River is full, all the other side drains that connect into it will not go and obviously that creates a problem.”
“If you look at the Odaw River, from Avenor towards the Lagoon, the size of the drain is 45 meters by 4.5 meters deep. Unfortunately, today when we go in there, we don’t even have up to a meter because it has been filled with other materials,” he explained.
President John Dramani Mahama has assured that government will adopt drastic measures to address the perennial flooding situation in the country.
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By: Godwin A. Allotey/citifmonline.com/Ghana