Africa-Press – Gambia. The Minister of Environment, Climate Change, and Natural Resources RoheyJohn Manjang on Tuesday 04th June, paid a visit to sites that are prone to flood as the rainy season approaches.
The places visited are Jabang, Kotu, Brikama, Banjul, Jeswang, and Abuko.
She led the visit with partners such as; National Disaster Management (NDMA), the National Environment Agency (NEA), the Ministry of Works, and the National Road Authority (NRA) among others.
Hon. Minister said that as much as the government is taking the lead to make sure that the infrastructure is resilient enough to withstand the pressure of climate change, citizens need to change their attitude.
“Every year before the rainy season we engage in major cleansing exercises however, the same exercise is repeated every year due to illegal waste dumping by people,” she said.
She highlighted that the site visit is to expose their sister organizations and ministries like NEA, NDMA, Physical Planning, and Ministry of Works among others to see the realities, put heads together, and provide sustainable solutions to the problems.
She revealed that some houses in some areas have to be demolished to redesign the drainage system which has begun already.
She calls on law enforcement agencies to punish people that violate these laws to set examples, “this will help in address climate change in the long run”.
“According to experts we will experience rain above the usual therefore we should all collectively do our part to prevent disaster,” she added.
Mr Massaneh Landing Ceesay, Specialist of the West Africa Coastal Action (WACA) a World Bank-funded program, said that this activity is currently running in nine countries.
“The project development objectives are to make coastal regions resilient to climate change. In The Gambia we are focused on addressing flood issues,” he said.
“We are currently working on removing wastes, and sand dumps along the drainage ways that connect to the channel to make sure before the project ends and rain falls the country will not experience floods like the previous years,” he assured.
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