At least 800 residents, including students of Gusheigu Senior High School (SHS) in the Gusheigu Municipality of the Northern Region have been rendered homeless.
This followed two heavy rainstorms that hit the area in less than 24 hours last Friday.
The affected communities are Gusheigu township, Kpatinga, Kpisinga, Nabuli, Yishini, Tindan and the Gusheigu SHS.
One of the affected buildings
The rainstorm also damaged properties worth thousands of Ghana cedis belonging to some victims.
Properties destroyed included houses, markets, mosques, school buildings, crops, and farm produce.
Some of the residents managed to salvage their properties from being carried away by floods had relocated, and are staying with family members and friends.
and cables belonging to the Northern Electricity Distribution Company (NEDCo) were also destroyed by the rainstorm.
The Gusheigu Municipal Director of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Mr Mohammed Inusah, who confirmed the disaster to the Ghanaian Times in an interview said that the rainstorm had destroyed properties belonging to affected people.
He said that at least 75 houses had been destroyed and hundreds of people displaced by the rainstorm.
“Many of the affected people were forced by the disaster to stay with friends, relatives and members of the community,” Mr Inusah said.
He further said NADMO had compiled a list of affected households for the needed support.
Mr Inusah said that his outfit was liaising with the Gusheigu Municipal Assembly to seek support for the affected people.
He also urged individuals, non-governmental organisations and philanthropists to assist the affected people.
Ms Ayisha Mohammed, a final year student of Gusheigu SHS, in an interview with the Ghanaian Times, said students have lost most of their personal belongings, and appealed to government, individuals and organisations to come to the aid of victims.
“Our text books and learning materials have been destroyed by the rainstorm,”she stated.
Ms Mohammed said currently, the students had been housed in the school’s dining hall, which she said was not convenient to the female students.
She made a special appeal to the MP for the area, Mr Alhassan Tampuli, to as a matter of emergency, and come to the aid of affected students.
A resident, Nba Azindoo Baako, affected by the disaster, lamented that his family members were currently living on a veranda belonging to a relative.
“It is not our making that we find ourselves in this situation, but it is the will of Allah and we pray that this is the end of such disaster,” he stated.
FROM YAHAYA NUHU NADAA, GUSHEIGU