Dakar: Senegal Interior Minister Antoine Felix Abdoulaye Dome is up to his knees in the water, on the outskirts of the capital of West African, surveying the damage to the flood.
He examined the house in Massar Timur Keur Regency: the first floor and the page had been immersed in brown water for three days.
Dragonfly floated above the swamp page, pumped the only one who struggled to flow.
Inside, furniture has been lifted from the ground.
The owner of the house, who refused named, spicy.
“They can’t afford,” he told AFP, pointing towards the minister and his entourage.
Anger has grown during routine floods that are increasingly routine in Dakar.
Dione and other officials stated when they toured Massar, and protesters elsewhere in Dakar blocked the highway.
Consisting around 3.7 million people, the city regularly flooded during reasons for rain July-October.
But the problem is getting worse.
This year, heavy floods hit only two rainy days.
Floods also come after repetitive government promises to solve problems.
Moise David Ndur, another Massar Keur resident, also fed up.
“Nothing is done,” he said.
“Some people even moved because of this”.
Many expect worse floods to come when the rain continues.
According to experts interviewed by AFP, all districts were built on the plains of floods, and in soft land close to the water table.
Planning is haphazard and local authority seems to provide a little control.
Senegal President Macky Sall launched a 10-year plan to fight flooding when he came to power in 2012, with a budget equivalent to around 1.14 billion euros ($ 1.4 billion).
Water pumps and culvises have been installed in several Dakar areas, managed to ward off flooding.
However, other districts from a rapidly growing city have been left untouched.
About a quarter of the 16 million Senegal population people live in the seafront city, where there is fierce pressure to be built due to lack of housing.
The government has tried to alleviate the fluctured areas without dealing with reasons underlying regular floods, according to Senegal Geologist Pape Goumbo Lo.
“Housing construction must take into account the nature of the soil,” he said, adding that there would be more studies of land and water tables.
Free construction for all also worsened flooding even because the rain fell to be less frequent.
“This is a very worrying paradox,” Cheikh Gueye said, a geography and researcher at the Dakar-based Enda-Monde NGO.
“Less and less rain cause more damage,” he added.
In Mbba, the edge of another dakar, did not go down again in three days, but the main road was still flooded with stagnant water.
Motorbikes, scooters and public transport vehicles can no longer use it.
Ibrahim Cisse, a local with water licked his ankle, saying “We have no choice but to wet or use a horse drawn carriage to cross the road”.
In front of him, around a dozen people perched on horse cars, which generally occur in Senegal but most are used to transport goods.
“There is a lot of damage, the shop owner cannot open,” another local said, who refused to be named.
“We have to pass this”.
But Cheikh Gueye, geography, pessimistic.
“We build a flood zone: every new environment of the environment is created, and the same error is made”.
The capital of Senegal floods again as experts blame poor planning
