Sunday, February 9, 2025

WUC disaster exposes our unpreparedness as a nation

It is over two weeks now since three employees of Water Utilities Corporation went missing while on duty at Gaborone Dam. Together with the boat they were using at the time, the three have not been found.

Although it is not official yet that three are dead, many people now presume the trio dead. What is of greater concern now is that the bodies of the three have not yet been found.

We pray and hope that the three people are found; dead or alive so that if dead, their loved ones could give them all the necessary last respects if there is to be any closure in such incidents.

Questions are beginning to surface on the preparedness of our countries to deal with disasters of this kind. Do we have the necessary resources, skills and infrastructure in place to handle such eventualities?

From the media briefings so far conducted by WUC, both the police and the army have been central to all the ongoing efforts at search and rescue. It would appear though that despite the spiritedness of all those involved, there is clearly a shortage when it comes to manpower, skills, equipment and resources needed.

In relative terms, the area scrutiny is nowhere as big as that which many countries have to cover for similar purposes. Gaborone Dam┬á – and this includes the water laden area as well as those parts where there is no water, is nowhere near the sizes of seas where some countries often find themselves having to search for their citizens in times of similar disasters.

We should use this tragedy as a nation to ask ourselves questions about the extent of our preparedness when it comes to dealing and handling with such disasters.

From where we are standing it would appear to us that the there has been under-investment in resources and training.

Insiders point out that for both the military and the police, the skills levels especially for scuba divers and related professionals are lower than they were in the 1990s. If that is true then we have problems in our hands.

We often see countries the world over having to contend and deal with such natural disasters like Tsunamis, hurricanes, fires and floods. Botswana like any other country is not in any way immune from such natural disasters.

When those happen they normally come in much larger scales, covering greater areas of land and affecting much bigger numbers of people.

If we cannot deal with a tragedy confined to an area as small as Gaborone Dam, then what chance do we have if say half of the country was to be submerged under water or that same size was set on fire?
We concede that the terrain of the dam is difficult.

But it also has not escaped our attention that the dam level is currently so low that by some estimates it has gone down 50%.

Across the countries there is evidence that many of the fire engines owned by many local government authorities are either in a state of disrepair or just outright derelict. Some of our international airports are also not doing much better. That is especially unacceptable.

We call on the authorities to seriously invest on emergency services across the board. We call on the military, the police, the local governments and the aviation authorities to put emergency services as some of their top most priorities when it comes to emergency services ÔÇô especially the search and rescue aspects of it.

Back to WUC disaster, it would appear like as a nation we have let down some of our compatriots who met this tragedy while on what is no doubt a national duty.

Spending more than two weeks without traces of these three men, let alone their boat should be a source of shame for all of us. We call on the government to intervene on behalf of WUC and consider asking for outside assistances in countries like South Africa that have a more experience and indeed more skills and resources when it comes to dealing with water related tragedies.

This cannot be time for misplaced nationalist sentiments. If we are unable to find our own people, we have to ask somebody else who can to help us.

RELATED STORIES

Read this week's paper