DAKAR, October 9, 2009—Standing in the doorway of her charming home in Dalifort, Dakar, Rokhaya Loum, in her sixties, is very grateful for the work being done by the brand new motor pump set up just in front of her house by firefighters. Several days ago her house was flooded because of heavy rains that prevented access. “We had water up to here,” she stated, placing her hands at chest height, “but since yesterday, everything has returned to normal, thanks to the work of the firefighters.”
Like almost a million other people, Ms. Loum has since the second half of August been subjected to flooding, because of the rains that battered the Dakar region. In a matter of days, all the suburbs of Dakar were under water, causing the Senegalese Government to activate its ORSEC (relief organization) emergency plan last August 27. The government made a plea asking its public and private sector partners to provide relief to the populations affected by the flooding.
The motor pump in front of Ms. Loum’s house is 1 of 18 bought by the Local National Development Program (PNDL) and distributed under an emergency procedure, thanks to financing from the International Development Association (IDA), the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries. The motor pumps were subsequently handed over to the Department of Civil Protection under the ORSEC plan, and ORSEC then made them available to the 153 firefighters deployed in the Dakar region.
Although Ms. Loum appears satisfied with the work of the firefighters, she still longs for the years prior to 2005. “I came here in 1994, and up until 2005 the rainwater passed by my house and flowed naturally to the far away lowlands. Our problems started when the headquarters for the municipal council was built, which became a barrier, causing the flooding of our houses,” she said.
Ms. Loum is far more fortunate than thousands of others who have had to leave their homes or who are still wading in the waters in almost all the neighborhoods of Pikine and Guédiawaye, two cities on the outskirts of the Senegalese capital.
“Here in Keur Massar, 11 out of 16 neighborhoods in the Parcelles Assainies district are completely flooded,” said Gora Ndao, vice-president of Jappo (“Solidarity” in Wolof, Senegal’s most widely spoken language), an organization which protects the interests of the residents of this town, located 20 kilometers from Dakar. “More than 100 families have left their homes, which have become inaccessible, to take refuge in other neighborhoods or towns across the country,” he said.
These displacements are very costly to the people because, according to Ms. Mame Diarra Mar, a resident of Pikine, “we were already poor and now we are forced to spend our limited resources on rent in order to provide shelter for our families, especially the children.” And the conditions there are deplorable based on the description she gives: “We have rented one single room and we all sleep there, parents and children, it is really the pits.”
Mr. Zacaria Sall, a Jappo member added angrily, “We were misled by the government agency that sold us the land, which is located in a river bed that dried out after years of drought. Then after the rains, the river took back its course, and even the fish have reappeared in several houses.”
The experts who have spoken at length in the media agree that the floods in the Dakar region were exacerbated by the fact that the people live in zones that are natural collectors of water, where the water table, once saturated, also rises.
Added to this natural phenomenon was the overflowing of the water retention basins built after the floods in 2005. According to the heads of the ORSEC plan, “since these basins did not empty before the rainy season, they could not play their rainwater collection role to prevent flooding.”
With substantial resources being made available to the ORSEC plan, which received $3.5 million from IDA to purchase 18 motor pumps as well as kilometers of drainage pipes, and rent 100 tank trucks, the World Bank has increased the firefighters’ capacity five-fold. Nevertheless, it is calling for the sustainable management of the flooded areas, through its spokesperson Habib Fétini, the Country Director for Senegal, who symbolically handed over the material purchased using IDA funds to the Senegalese Minister of the Interior, Mr. Cheikh Tidiane Sy.
Although firefighters pumped over one million cubic meters in the suburbs of Dakar within three weeks, Moctar Thiam, the leader of the World Bank team that managed the emergency program, is still very cautious about this solution. “Pumping of water can only be an interim response because flooding can be expected each year as long as there is no proper water drainage system,” he cautioned.
In 2005, the World Bank made specific recommendations about the need to build water drainage infrastructure. “If it is expected that people will be displaced, it should also be expected that the space made available will be immediately occupied by even poorer people, and the cycle will repeat itself,” Thiam said.
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