Opinion Article: WHAT IS THE SOLUTION OF RECURRENT FLOODS IN BELET WEYN CITY?

 The town of Belet Weyn experiencing  repeatedly worst flooding and thousands of families displaced from the city in each year, the floods disturbed the normal life of the residents, major business of the city are in bog down situation while the workforce who basically relied on the wage earning from daily activities are in humanitarian ground. Every Somali citizen looking for an answer and questioning himself what is the reasons behind, the repeatedly floods of the capital city of Hiiraan province and what is the solution?  

To my understanding, it can be categorized reasons result repeatedly floods of belet weyn city into three main reasons. First the Italian colony inhabited and built a place which is a farmland where unsuited totally to inhabit. The second reason is the banking soil of the river’s water run ground and The third reason is mismanagement and irresponsibility of the administration, particularly Hirshabelle State with unawareness of the society, including businessmen/women, elders and elites, because of their mindsets of 𝗗𝗼n’𝘁 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆. 

The floods in Belet weyn impact the economic life activities, thousands of families displaced the city each year, this floods began from 1961, a year after the Somalia’s independence.

The heavy rains in Ethiopia is the cause of worst flooding in Somalia. In 2018 Save the children’s report estimated, the people effected the floods are 772,000 person and displaced from their homes, the estimated number is almost close to million, based on the previous statistical estimate, the expectation of this year could be the same or more because of the increasing migrated people from rural areas to urban cities.

Belet weyn floods result destruction of buildings and infrastructures such as roads, it also destroys the planted seeds of the farms.  The merchant trade and daily economic activities of the city gets stuck and many families’ life is in risk because of food insecurity, luck of hygienic water and diseases. 

Call for humanitarian emergency is important during this tough time but it is not durable salutation. Since the city highly needs, a durable solution of this repeating floods, this two important recommendation can be the solution 

         a)     Working closely the elders, elites, diaspora community originally from the region and businessmen/women with help of central government and international non-profit organization to do either relocating the city from this farmland place and locating between Ceel-jaale and Genta mountain.

               b)   or  The government and the people of the city to build water tunnels which takes the water outside the city during the floods.