ARE WE PREPARED FOR A NATURAL DISASTER IN GHANA?
June 12, 2008
Rapid increases in natural disasters particularly hurricanes, floods and earthquakes in China, Japan, United States and in Ghana calls for special attention of governments and policy makers. Management of such chaotic uncertainties is possible. Is Ghana prepared to face and manage such chaotic uncertainties? Do we have the expertise to help manage future risks such as the tsunamis of Asia, Katrina of the US, Sichuan earthquake in recent China, the 2007 Floods of Northern region of Ghana and the June 2008 earthquake of McCarthy Hills? How much did it costs to bring relief to the flood victims in 2007 and what was the value of the farm products and properties destroyed? What was the impact of the flood on our economy? The solution is the CASUALTY ACTUARY.
As Africans, we need to move away from temporal measures to the management of disasters and find permanent solutions to problems. While these risks are unavoidable and unpredictable to some extent, it can be managed by the services of Casualty Actuaries. These are experts who put price tags on risks. They analayse the past, model the future, assess the risks involved and communicate the results in financial terms to decision makers. As Ghana is developing and the country investing in human capital, I believe government and parliament in forecasting the future, should consider employing the services of Casualty Actuaries to team up with NADMO, the Geological services and the Metrological Services Department to help save loss incurred in managing disasters in Ghana. They recommend to government as the plan and design of building in cities, which will have helped us in the case of siteing of buildings in McCarthy Hills and on Aburi mountains. Though the earthquake machine (seismographs) is importantas must receive attention, Casualty Actuaries are also necessary for development, having historic successes in Florida(US), UK, Philippines and Japan.
Whilst Ghana has few recently practicing Actuaries the world’s fewer percentage, their services are under utilized thereby resulting in their exodus to US, UK, South Africa and neigbouring Nigeria. We have the expertise and can reduce future risks by the services of Casualty Actuaries.
I wish to recommend that government, parliament and other policy makers should rally to pass a law to establish a Government Actuaries Department in Ghana .This will yield the country higher returns because we will save funds which will have been intended to give relief to the disaster victims.
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EmmanuelOsafroadu Amankwah
Candidate,
Casualty Actuarial Society
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5 Responses to “ARE WE PREPARED FOR A NATURAL DISASTER IN GHANA?”
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Kojo,i think this issue of the probability of natural disasters occurring should be carefully considered and dealt with wisely.i use the word ‘carefully’ and ‘wisely’ because ghana is geographically out of the way of natural disasters like hurricanes,major earthquakes,monsoons and volcanic activities of any kind.however,what we are at risk of experiencing are floods and MINOR earth tremors.floods are dangerous and i need not shed any light on what happened in the north a few months ago because we are all very much aware of what happened.so i think even if the government should consider taking any steps in addressing this issue,they should focus only on floods and forget the rest.i dont mean to sound inconsiderate but i think it will be a total waste of time and money raising funds of any kind to deal with any other issue concerning natural disasters other than floods.
I think the government should give this a thought.
Africans are noted to be managers of disasters and I think we have to move away from this.
That is a beautiful piece of work.
I think the government have to do something about how people build their houses on top of the hillsexample is the mac. hall which sometimes is very dangerous because any heavy thunder storm can even cause diaster.
So the MInister in charge of the Housing should react now for any future occurences