Flooding: Ex-Commissioner Urges PH Masterplan Implementation

Former Chairman of Rivers State Deflooding Committee, Prof Winston Belgam, says the reent flooding in Port Harcourt  and its environs is as a result of the non-implementation of the Port Harcourt flood masterplan.
Prof. Belgam, who was a former commissioner in the old Rivers State said his interview with The Tide in Port Harcourt.
He said that the Port Harcourt flood masterplan, which was initiated during the administration of Dr. Peter Odili, identified all the major creeks and water channels criss crossing the city and proffered ways of maintaining them.
The former commissioner said that if the plan is properly studied and implemented, flooding in the city would greatly be minimised.
“It is the place of the present administration to look at the report. We identified all the creeks and channels and we also recommended ways of maintaining them”, he said.
The environmentalist also criticised residents of the city for failing to assist the government in the cleaning of drains and gutters in their vicinities, stressing that since the government cannot be everywhere at the sametime, it beholves the people to assist the authorities by cleaning their gutters and drains.
Prof. Belgam also condemned the indiscriminate dumping of refuse in major creeks across the city, pointing out that such an attitude may result to large scale flooding that may result in the destruction of lives and property in the city.
He said that his institute Uptonvill Petroleum Institute is ready to offer consultancy services to the state government on ways of checking the menace of flooding in the city.
Meanwhile, chairman of the State Council of the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ), Mr Omoni Ayotamuno has lamented that he and other neghbours are at risk of losing their property to flooding at Rukpokwu.
Ayotamuno told a UNICEF conference in Port Harcourt that the section of Rukpokwu community where he stays has been experiencing flooding for the past weeks and stressed the need for urgent intervention by the authorities.