Ghana Risk A Possible Mudslide If . . . - NADMO Boss

The Director General of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) Nana Agyemang says the country risk a mudslide in certain parts of the country if building permits are granted to individuals to erect structures in disaster prone areas.

More than 400 people have died, and 600 are still missing in Sierra Leone after a mudslide swept away homes on the edge of the capital, Freetown, in one of Africa's worst flood disasters in living memory.

According to him, what happened in Sierra Leone was just negligence on the part government and city authorities who granted permit to citizens to raise structures near the sugar mountain where hundreds of people were washed away in the mudslide.

Speaking on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme he recounted how one of their City Engineers was murdered by some residents for advocating against them for erecting buildings near the sugar mountain where the mudslide has claimed hundreds of lives.

"If we decide to be hard and crack the whip on people who have erected structures in areas like Weija and other earth quake prone areas where any earth quake tremor will cause a mudslide like what happened in Sierra Leone, you will see how people will be agitated and be blaming the government.

"As I am talking to you now, a total of about 490 have been buried where as about 600 people are still missing and unaccounted for," he added.

We are here providing technical support and assistance to the government and the affected.

"We have also met with the Ghanaian Community here and have asked them to observe every education on the safety tips we have given them to avert any disaster, adding that there are lots of education we need to learn as a country from what has happenned in the Sierra Leone," he explained.

Crew and aid workers continue the grim work of extracting bodies from tonnes of debris after fierce storms left impoverished, low-lying areas of Freetown buried.

Volunteers have been digging with pickaxes and, at times, only their hands.