More than 500 people in the Tolon/Kumbungu District of the Northern Region have been rendered homeless following a severe rainstorm that hit the area last Saturday. The storm, which ripped off the roofs of 97 houses and caused considerable damage to foodstuff and personal belongings, however, recorded no casualties.

At Kumbungu, the Nibrasiat English and Arabic JSS block and its kitchen collapsed in the storm while the building of the Kumbungu Local Authority Primary School had two of its three classroom roofs blown off. Houses and barns, most of them roofed with thatch, were also destroyed in the storm.

A skills training centre and a fertilizer depot at Kumbungu and the Bontanga Clinic at Wuba village had their roofs destroyed. Two compound houses at Wantugu were burnt before the rain as the strong wind blew thatch into a local coal-pot fire.

Thirty-five people were consequently displaced. Personal belongings including cash, clothes, bowls, fouls, doves, as well as large quantities of maize and millet stored in barns, were burnt.

At Lungbungu village, a 138 million-cedi European Union Micro Three classroom school block, which was yet to be commissioned, was also destroyed in the rainstorm. Mr. Alhassan Baako, the Tolon-Kumbungu District Chief Executive, who conducted newsmen round the communities, said all affected schools would be provided with temporary structures to enable them to re-open.

He said the district assembly would liaise with the Ghana Education Service to provide permanent structures for the affected schools. Mr Baako announced that the United Kingdom Department for Internation Development (DFID) would construct 20 new school blocks in the district this year and assured the affected schools that they would benefit from the project.

He appealed to NGOs and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to come to the aid of the people to supplement the district assembly's efforts. The DCE also appealed to the Volta River Authority to visit Kumbungu to repair the broken-down high tension electricity poles.