Some residents of Palm Wine Junction a suburb of Dodowa in Accra have been declared missing with some others rendered homeless following three days of heavy rainstorms causing floods in the community.
The residents also accused Day Shine Quarry Company of worsening the situation by opening water from their reservoir dam during the hours of rain.
According to the residents, during the quarry, the miners engaged in activities at the bedrock of their site which prevented the free flow of water from the mountains.
According to the residents, two to three spots of rain could not have caused the flood in the community rather they suspected the Chinese quarry company could have opened their reservoir dam while raining.
Explaining to the media, Mawunya Engelbert Abbey, the Chairman for God’s City Neighborhood Association at Kpone Bawaleshie specifically at Palm Wine Junction closer to forest hotel “yesterday, we were here around 3 pm it started raining, it rained for a while and stopped, came again and stopped, the third one came and stopped.
Then all of a sudden we realized that the whole community was flooded. By then it has stopped raining so we realized that the water was from the mountainside which occupied the road and beyond no car was able to move; human beings were stranded we have to use excavators to rescue them to safe ground. So we tried to locate what caused the flood because for so many years that we have been here nothing such has happened before”.
We were querying ourselves and some people started saying that it was the Chinese Quarry Site that caused the problem. So we intended to believe it because they were issues we had with them. We send a petition to them that when they opened the water to the community in the dry season, small water will come from the top we trace it and we saw the source there so we finally concluded that it was the cause of this one too.
“What we were thinking is that their reservoir got full and Flowed their boundaries so they opened it to the community and we have another river called Chaiku River that also overflow its boundaries so the two water came together and flooded the whole place. Through our suspension, we went to the Day Shine Quarry site to verify for ourselves and we saw that they have a Dam. The water is coming from the mountain into the dam, when it is full they open the channel for it to come to the community.
“Several petitions have been sent to them, initially, it was the dust and hazardous materials they use in quarrying was our focus so we are calling on stakeholders, authorities, and the three assemblies ( Kpone Katamaso, Shai-Osudoku, and Akupem South municipal assembly) to do something about the situation. Because they are saying that they need the town and planning map to provide a drainage system but they are not getting it and since this place falls within three assemblies they don’t know where to go for it that’s why we called the media here today”, he explained.
Visiting the premises of Day Shine Quarry Company, in the early hours of Wednesday, Kwame Appiah, Operater at the company said, they can not be blamed entirely for the flood.
“The community is blaming them for the flood, but what really happened yesterday that caused the flood was the Chaiku River overflowing, yes! We admit to opening our dam but that was not the cause of the flood. This is water that flows from the back of the mountain. I will not deny the fact that some of the water does not flow from our site”, we have a machine that pumps it out,” he said.
