The communications manager of the National Building Review Board-NRBC, Herbert Zziwa says that lack of supervision provided an opportunity for the developer to deviate from the original construction plans.
The National
Building Review Board-NBRB has said that preliminary findings indicate that
the Speke Courts extension building collapsed largely due to poor quality
construction materials and lack of supervision.
The
two-floor building still under construction collapsed on Monday
night. Eyewitnesses say that the building collapsed at around 7:00 PM
while casual laborers were finalizing their day’s duty.
Engineers
and architects from NBRB visited the site to ascertain the circumstances under
which it collapsed.
The
communications manager of NBRB, Herbert
Zziwa says that the lack of supervision provided an opportunity for the developer to deviate from the original construction plans.
Zziwa notes
that construction materials at the site were falsified and instead of using the
recommended 16 mm size iron bars, they instead opted for the 12 mm, which
overwhelmed the building with excess weight, causing it to collapse.
“When you clearly
study the architectural designs, the developer was instructed to use eight
pieces of 16 mm size iron bars in some of the columns, however, he instead
opted for four pieces of 12 mm size, so we saw a gap between what was on the
drawings and the actual implementation on the ground, which overtime resulted into
the collapse of the building,” he says.
Zziwa also
cites low amounts of cement in the concrete mixture at both the foundation and
different beam levels, which in the long weakened the building’s holding spaces,
causing it to collapse on the ground.
Zziwa adds
that they have extracted samples from the rubble, which shall be subjected to
further analysis before releasing a conclusive report to the public.
//cue in: “there was a…
Cue out…the general public,”.
The Acting Jinja
City Clerk, Moses Lorika notes that the developer commenced construction works
without clearance from the Jinja city’s building control committee, making
their activities illegal.
On Tuesday,
Police cleared the hotel to proceed with their operations after the incident.
The
Kiira regional police spokesperson, James Mubi, said that a team of police
personnel from the fire and rescue services department assessed the
situation and confirmed that, the debris had no danger to the
neighboring facilities.
