The National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) is set to conduct a comprehensive assessment of old buildings nationwide, following the tragic collapse of five structures in Cape Coast, Central Region.
According to the Director of NADMO’s Inspectorate Unit, Richard Amo Yartey, this initiative aims to prevent future disasters by identifying and addressing potential risks in aging buildings.
“This is an eye-opener, a wake-up call for us to start doing some assessment on very old structures which have not seen maintenance for a very long while,” Yartey emphasized. “So that we don’t wake up to hear some of these things happening in other places in Ghana. Cape Coast is going to start, and it has to be replicated in other parts of the country to ensure that old structures that have not seen maintenance for many years do not collapse suddenly, with people dying.”
The assessment comes amid a dire situation in the Central Region, where flooding has affected over 5,000 victims and displaced 124 people due to collapsed buildings in Cape Coast. The number of municipalities affected by flooding has risen from 11 to 14 within a day, with newly affected areas including districts where illegal mining is prevalent.
The Central Regional NADMO Director, Kwesi Dawood, has, therefore, appealed for more relief items, stating that the region is in distress. “The region is in need of more relief items to support the affected families,” he said. NADMO has already presented relief items to disaster victims in Cape Coast, but more support is needed to address the growing crisis.
