By Mohamed T Massaquoi
People who construct houses without permit risk having their structures demolished, the Ministry of Works, Housing and Infrastructure has warned residents of Pujehun.
An official said they were stepping up sensitization against construction in disaster prone zones like swampy areas which have contributed to recurrent flooding and loss of properties in the disaster prone district.
Almost every year Pujehun records severe flooding which leads to massive losses of properties. Last year nearly 1000 houses were destroyed. 2015 was one of the worst as some communities, like Tossor in the Kpanga Kabondea chiefdom, were totally wiped out.
This has been attributed to many factors, notably proximity of dwelling homes to the rivers Wanjei, Moa, and Mano.
Joseph Kobbie, Housing Officer under the ministry of Works in Pujehun, said people have been putting up structures without going through the legal procedures. He said the practice was particularly prevalent in the district headquarters town of Pujehun.
Kobbie told Politico that on several occasions he’d had to seize construction tools as a way of discouraging the practice. But he said in some instances politicians have interfered, which has made his work difficult.
As Housing Officer, Kobbie is the most senior representative of the ministry in the district. He works with a staff of three people, all of whom are auxiliary workers, he said. He added that he’d realized that most of the people who built in the wrong places did so out of ignorance. He said his task was to sensitize them, and that he’d been doing so through radio discussions. But he observed that most of the residents in Sulima and Gendema, two of the areas in Pujehun mostly prone to flooding, listened to Liberian radio stations.
But Kobbie said he’s constrained by lack of access to vehicle.
“The people who are building are doing so because they are not informed and because I am not mobile, I am stationed in Pujehun, I cannot move and talk to them,” Kobbie said.
He said besides the risk of disaster, houses that were built without the knowledge of the ministry stood the risk of forfeiture in case government plans to widen the township roads.
Bockarie Buannie, Chief Administrator at the Pujehun District Council, explained what they’d been doing towards the issue. He said they worked collaboratively with community people through focus groups and radio discussions on disaster management systems. He said they had been telling them about bad farming practices and the practice of constructing houses in dangerous locations, especially flood and fire prone areas.
Buannie told Politico that they’d been doing this in collaboration with the Office of National Security and humanitarian organizations in the district. He said the representative of the Housing ministry in the district had always been part of the effort.
(C) Politico 24/05/16
