As the chances of finding more survivors in the building that collapsed earlier this week in Nairobi moved from slim to remote, poor oversight and corruption were being blamed for the disaster.
”It is not just a problem of a collapsed building. It is a much wider problem of a lack of capacity to handle the huge construction industry,” said Abonyo Erastus, vice-chairperson of the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK), adding that the Nairobi city council (NCC) has too few architects on staff to maintain building standards in the Kenyan capital.
”If I submitted a construction plan to the NCC for approval, definitely it will not be looked at by a professional architect. Instead, it will be checked by other people who may not have the expertise to ascertain the flaws in the plan,” he said. ”This is because the number of architects is inadequate, and therefore the council has no capacity to match ever-growing development in the city.”
Concrete used for the collapsed building, still under construction at the time that it went down, had apparently not been allowed to set properly.
Fourteen people are confirmed to have died in the incident, while more than 100 were reported injured. It remains unclear how many people were in the building at the time of its collapse.
Efforts to locate survivors were assisted by rescue experts from Israel, Britain and the United States. The Israeli team left on Thursday as operations moved from rescue to recovery of bodies and clearance of rubble.
Kenyan law requires any person or company wishing to put up a building to have the structure designed by an architect and an engineer. Their plan is submitted to the city council for approval, and then presented to the town planning committee for further scrutiny. In the event that construction is given the go-ahead, it must be inspected by the city council at various stages.
These inspection procedures do not appear to have been followed by the owner of the building that collapsed — a man still being sought by police.
”He was supposed to do have done this, but it may be that he did not invite [the council] for inspection … Yet the law is very clear [about] at what stages a building needs to be inspected,” Peter Kibinda, deputy director of city planning at the NCC, said.
Seven NCC officials accused of failing to monitor construction of the building have been suspended from their posts. This comes amid widespread allegations of corruption among council officials, who are often said to accept bribes for licensing buildings — and turning a blind eye to substandard construction.
”As the head of the local government ministry responsible for supervising buildings, I take responsibility [for] the collapsed building. Obviously there has been a lapse in our expertise in our supervision. It is something we are going to look at very critically,” Local Government Minister Musikari Kombo told journalists on Wednesday.
Shabaan Isaac, assistant minister for local government, has also announced that a task force will be set up to investigate the disaster. Questions are already being raised about the ultimate effectiveness of the force, however, given that recommendations made by an earlier team that investigated a 1996 building disaster have yet to be implemented.
The 1996 incident took place when the wall of a building collapsed in Nairobi, killing more than 10 people. The team probing the disaster advised, among other things, that a Building Development Authority (BDA) be established to regulate the construction industry. This body would include building professionals and government representatives.
But to date, no such authority has been set up.
”Last December, we met with the permanent secretary of the ministry of public works and reminded him of the urgency of the BDA. Until now we have received no response,” said Erastus. ”Unless we develop proper structures to address the construction industry, many more buildings will continue coming down.”
As important as improving controls on future buildings may be, officials also need to address fears that a good many of those already constructed may be disasters-in-waiting, says the AAK.
While the association has no precise information on the number of unsafe buildings in the country, it believes most in the middle- and low-income residential areas are suspect. In 2003, a residential building in a densely populated suburb in Nairobi collapsed, injuring two people.
For the moment, though, Kenyans can do little but sift through what remains of the building that crumbled on Monday — perhaps in the knowledge that the loss of life could have been even greater. At the time the structure collapsed, it was already adorned with billboards inviting potential tenants to apply for space. — IPS