Kenya: Demolish condemned buildings, arrest owners

The tale of collapsed buildings in Nairobi and other parts of the country is getting to be one too many. On Thursday, a building collapsed in Roysambu killing at least four people and injuring several others, even as rescuers go through the debris searching for survivors.

The last reported case of a collapsing building was in December last year, when a weak building in Nairobi’s Kaloleni estate caved in, claiming seven lives.

There is so much lethargy in the Nairobi County Government’s buildings inspectorate department and the Ministry of Lands and Housing that such an occurrence is treated as minor inconvenience not worth much attention.

After the Kaloleni building collapse, the Cabinet Secretary for Lands and Housing at the time visited the site, gave the necessary assurances to appease the survivors and bereaved, threatened unspecified action against lax officials then left.

While the owner of the building was arrested days later, and probably released on bond, nothing has been heard of the matter again until now that another building has collapsed. Available statistics show that no less than eight buildings have collapsed within a period of eight years between 2006 and 2014.

In October 2009 and January 2010 two buildings collapsed in Kiambu County. In June 2011 two buildings collapsed in Embakasi and Ngara estates of Nairobi while in September of the same year another building collapsed in Mathare North, Nairobi. The fact that buildings are able to come down with such frequency is symptomatic of a system failure.

While the Cabinet Secretary for Lands gave the assurance that all buildings within Nairobi that did not meet standards and which were irregularly approved by corrupt officials will be brought down and the owners prosecuted for endangering lives, there is no concrete evidence that this is being done. On the contrary, a visit to some estates in Nairobi will show heightened activity as buildings come up without proper planning. Some buildings are so obviously dangerous that even to someone who is not an engineer they give the impression of a disaster in waiting.

What role does the city county government play in ensuring safety of buildings? For any individual or company to erect a high rise building in the city, the building must be approved by the relevant authorities. Consequent upon such approval, the actual construction work must be entrusted to approved engineers and building contractors.

The county government must also provide a development control approval: Which begs the question - how are these death traps able to come up and elude the attention of those charged with the onus of making all building structures are safe for habitation?

Laxity on the part of the Nairobi County Government, the Architectural Society of Kenya, the Ministry of Lands and Housing and the Kenya Bureau of Standards has made it possible for developers to use building materials, especially the metal rods, that do not meet specifications for safety.

While the requirement of the law is that all new buildings under construction must have boards displaying details of architects, engineers and contractors involved in the construction work, perhaps only one out of 100 meet this requirement. This is something that easily explains why all the collapsed buildings were erected by quacks, probably after government officials received bribes to look the other way.

Our disaster preparedness is still seriously wanting. It is an indictment on the government’s ability to be relied on when it is needed most that residents, without proper tools, but with the urgency to save lives, go to work in a bid to rescue those trapped under the debris of collapsed buildings.

Now that the monster of corruption is being tackled, the government must go beyond issuing futile ultimatums, demolish all poor structures and prosecute all those involved in their construction.