Ghana’s parliament has said the destruction of the chamber’s roofing system during Tuesday’s heavy rains was purely accidental and had nothing to do with lack of maintenance of the facility.
Heavy rains on Tuesday night revealed leakages in the roof of Parliament as portions of the floor got soaked in rain, which entered the chamber through the defective roof.
The leakages disrupted parliamentary business and forced the house to defer sitting. The rains soaked the carpet in the chamber and also messed up seats in the house.
Some persons have attributed the incident to a poor maintenance culture by managers of the facility.
However, speaking in an interview with Moro Awudu, host of the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Wednesday, 1 February, Kate Addo, Director of Public Affairs of Parliament, said: “Basically it was an accident, the roof was ripped off and the place started leaking but everybody was safe.”
“Obviously it is not the best of situations but I don’t know if it would be embarrassing because it was purely accidental. We didn’t have any control over it. It was really heavy winds which ripped off the roof. Nobody had any control over it. It was obvious that it was accidental.
“It would have been embarrassing if it was a tiny little leakage that should have been fixed but this is purely something that we had actually no control over. We have been in the chamber for years but we have never had that problem before and it is best to treat it as we see it, to be purely accidental. If we can avoid it, we would have avoided it, but we couldn’t.”
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