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• Erosion destroys fence, toilet facilities, culvert, threatens staff quarters ν We’ll address issue soon, govt assures
From Obinna Odogwu, Awka
If an urgent action is not taken to check the erosion wreaking havoc in Amanuke General Hospital, Amanuke in Awka North Local Government Area of Anambra State, one of the staff quarters near the gully site may be the next to go down.
Already, the deep gully has destroyed a section of the hospital’s fence, sliced off a culvert near it and also washed away some economic trees and medicinal herbs in the area.
On the opposite side of the hospital, the deep gully is also threatening the residential home of Mr. Humphrey Onyekomelu which shares a boundary with it.
Onyekomelu told Sunday Sun that the gully erosion had, sometime last year, destroyed a shop he built at the end of his fence near the gully, not knowing or expecting that the erosion site would expand further at the time.
“A section of that shop’s walls is still standing there; you must have seen it when you visited the place. The erosion washed away the rods and other materials used in setting up the building”, he lamented.
Onyekomelu, a community leader, revealed to Sunday Sun that the gully, which had been threatening buildings in the area, had earlier destroyed a toilet facility belonging to the hospital.
Going down memory lane, the octogenarian recalled that the problem started when some residents of the area channelled floodwaters to the boundary line between his compound and that of the hospital when he lived abroad, outside the state.
“That was around 1989. I came back to see that a culvert had been built there, channelling all the floodwaters to my side,” he recalled.
He made it clear, however, that the erosion area, which is now a pathway for all the floodwaters in that part of the community, was “not a flood channel before.”
Onyekomelu said that when the erosion problem was still small and manageable, some villagers living at the upper part of that area resisted his efforts to channel the floodwater elsewhere so as to protect the hospital and his home.
“When the floodwaters started causing troubles, washing away the soil surface in that area, my son budgeted N1.6 million to carry out major remedial work there, starting from the source of the whole problem but the people from the other village resisted it, thinking that it would affect them negatively”, he stated.
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At the moment, workers at the hospital are worried about their safety. They said that the erosion issue gives them sleepless nights as one of their colleagues and a corps member are living in the building close to the gully.
A health assistant at the hospital, Mrs Chinenye Nkemdilim, who lives in the said building, told Sunday Sun that she now sleeps with her two eyes wide open.
She explained that she wakes up intermittently every night to check the erosion area just to be sure it hasn’t gotten to the building where they live.
“We are living in fear in this general hospital. Our lives are now in serious danger. I am the one living in this place. A National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member is here too.
“We wake up every night to check the erosion site; to be sure that it hasn’t hit our residential quarters. The building is so close to the erosion site”, she said.
Nkemdilim revealed that the ugly development at the hospital had been reported to the relevant officers of the government, including the State Hospital Management Board but nothing had been done about it since the report was filed.
“Our H/A with his colleagues came here to see the erosion site. They assured us that the government would do something about it”, she said.
Explaining further, Nkemdilim revealed that “our doctor has been writing to the government, complaining about these erosion issues but since that time till now, nothing has been done about it.”
“But as it stands now, the erosion is encroaching rapidly. As you can see, it has destroyed the fence. And it is rapidly eating deep into the general hospital.”
When contacted, the Commissioner for Health in the state, Dr Afam Obidike, confirmed that the hospital’s erosion issues had been tabled before him. He said that the government would tackle the matter very soon.
Obidike explained that the Prof. Chukwuma Soludo-led administration met the hospital in a very deplorable and dysfunctional state without doctors and nurses but had been able to post some health officers there.
He revealed that the renovation of hospital structures across the state was on-going and that about 30 had been done in Anambra North Senatorial Zone. He said the erosion issues at the Amanuke General Hospital would also be addressed in the same vein.
“So, we are going to do that. We are renovating all the hospitals but the erosion problem doesn’t affect the services there.
“When we assumed office, there were no doctors and nurses there. But this is an infrastructure thing. It will be done”, the health commissioner assured.
