Time to punish rogue building contractors

KDF officers together with Red Cross workers carry a body retrieved from debris on a 6-storey building that collapsed at Kasarani on November 15, 2022. [Wilberforce Okwiri, Standard]

In May 1996, 16 people were killed while sheltering from a downpour when a balcony collapsed at Sunbeam Supermarket on Nairobi's Moi Avenue. A Commission of Inquiry that followed attributed the building failure to uncontrolled physical planning, inadequate and outdated legislation, inadequate controls and enforcement, corruption and professional inefficiency.

Almost three decades later, dozens of lives continue to be lost around the country from the collapse of poorly constructed buildings largely caused by developers breaking the rules and cutting corners with impunity.