CANALISE ODAWNA RIVER

CANALISE ODAWNA RIVER
Nature has been very kind to us, Ghanaians, but we have been very wicked to nature. God has given Ghana, all that it needs. We should make good use of these natural gifts to us.

In Accra, the nation’s capital, we have some very strategically located rivers in the city, which, we could turn them into revenue generating ventures, but we have left them idle and they have been depleting the little revenue the city earns.
Instead turning these rivers into canals or other water bodies and get money out of them, we have left them to create filth to breed mosquitoes to give us malaria, and many other diseases. The long-term fight against malaria and other health hazards rage on without any knowledge of when such diseases will be eradicated from Ghana. Why, should we in the 21st century leave these and important God’s gifts to us, to engulf lives and property, while we could get millions of cedis from these rivers.



The Odawna River in Accra, in one, that is in a strategic centre of Accra, stretches from south to the north of Accra, it should be canalised, and all the big gutters that follow into it with bad water diverted or to another deeper channel into the sea.

The benefits of canalising Odawna River:



• Water transportation within Accra

• Beautifying the city of Accra

• Getting rid of the filth in Accra

• Reducing the spreading and breeding of mosquitoes

• It will help ease reduce traffic in Accra

• Reducing floods in Accra, it can now flow easily

• Water sports could be encouraged; i.e. water skiing, and scubas swimming

and other water games could be practised and enjoyed

• Whenever, there are floods there is likely some people, who live by the river

could get drowned but if it’s turned unto a canal these death rates would

reduce because, people would be in the canal 24 hours and lives will be

saved easily and faster.

• It would be a source of revenue for the government.

• It would create employment opportunities for the youth.







2.

How to do it

• Lease the river to private investors.

• Go into alliance with other interested bodies or individuals

• Should be a long term concerned project for government

• Sell the river to private investors (local or foreign)

• AMA to construct the canal, by involving other stakeholders and in bits, it could be done even if it will take them fifty years, I want to see the river canalised one day and generation after us will enjoy the canal.

How to manage it

• Enlarge the river and have the gutters that flow into the river diverted and flowed into the sea by another means.

• Only unauthorized users should be on the canal to operate

• One company to run it as a revenue generation unit

• Life guards to be stained at vantage point at the canal

• Only modern means of sea transport should be allowed to be used to carry people from one to another.

Ghana needs other means of transport and we also need to keep our cities clean. Such eyesores should be turned unto eye appealing sights.

©2009, Godwin-Xavier Ayeebo

Email: gayeebo@gmail.com