With torrential rainfall coupled with the spillage of the Bagre Dam in Burkina Faso, many communities in the Northern part of Ghana have been submerged with roads flooded with water making it difficult for mobility.
With these communities flooded, some final year Junior High School (JHS) students in the various Northern Regions have expressed their inability to sit for this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) but the case is different in Saboba.
The Saboba District Assembly in the Northern Region putting in efforts to support these finalists hired canoes to transport 210 students to their various examination centers.
District Chief Executive (DCE) for Saboba, George Birigini revealed in an interview with Happy 98.9 FM’s Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show that the district office of NADMO in the region was unable to provide students with life jackets as they were ferried across flooded areas.
“From the pictures being circulated, you can see just a few of the students wearing life jackets. The life jackets we had were not enough. We are talking about two hundred & ten (210) students and we were working with only fifteen (15) life jackets.”
The DCE furthered that he had to personally purchase the life jackets to ensure the safety of the students as they crossed over to their examination centers because, “the district NADMO office currently does not have a single life jacket in their office and because they couldn’t reach out to their regional office I had to take action.”
He furthered that the flooding situation which started days prior to these students sitting for their finals affected their studies. “The kids were worried and some told me that for 2-3 days they had been spending study time thinking of how they would get to their examinations centers and back. I told them to relax and study and promised to use the same means to get them back to their homes.”
George who was overwhelmed by the damage of the floods admitted that people in the region least expected such heavy floods, especially in Sabosa and “that has made it difficult for NADMO to assess the level of damage and provide the appropriate help.”
Communities downstream the White Volta have over the years been at the receiving end anytime the Burkinabe authorities spill excess water from the Bagre Dam.
This year, NADMO had increased its activities with intensive preventive measures. On August 5, this year, the organization issued a flood alert to a number of communities in northern Ghana asking residents to evacuate to safe areas.
However, the area has still suffered a lot of damages and some casualties.
By: Joel Sanco
