The Engineering Council of Ghana has expressed grave concern over the surge in collapsed buildings in the country, which has resulted in the loss of lives and properties.

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To address this trend, the council has decided to set up an emergency team to thoroughly investigate the incidents that have taken place so far.

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The Registrar of the Council, Mr Wise Ametefe, announced the establishment of the team and stated that it will also offer technical support to Assemblies in enforcing building regulations and directly respond to such disasters.

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Mr Ametefe, while speaking to the media, attributed the blame to the respective Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) for not being up to task with respect to the approval of permits for new buildings.

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“The Council is taking the cases very seriously. We agree that there could be failure in one aspect of the regulation, but that could not be attributed to the Engineering Council. It is mainly the Assemblies who are responsible for approval of buildings, but the professionals in the Assemblies should ensure that buildings submitted for approvals are vetted before permits are granted,” Mr Ametefe said, as quoted by the Ghana News Agency.

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In May so far, four cases of collapsed buildings have been reported. On May 1, a three-storey building collapsed at Madina in the Greater Accra Region, which reportedly killed one person and injured three others. Four days later, an individual was reported dead after being trapped under the rubble of the collapsed building situated at Nanakrom in the Adentan Municipality.

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Additionally, over the weekend, a six-storey building under construction at the city campus of the University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale collapsed during a rainstorm. The most recent incident occurred last Tuesday, when a three-storey building at Old Bortianor collapsed, leaving seven individuals injured.

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In response to the latest incident, Mr Wise Ametefe revealed that preliminary investigations showed that there were “a lot of flaws in the construction”.

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“Concrete columns were there without reinforcement. Concrete work was done porously…there was very little supervision,” he said.

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The Engineering Council regulates the practice of engineering and provides for regulated matters to secure the highest professional standards in the practice of engineering.

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It is the role of the Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to ensure that permit applications for new buildings in their area of jurisdiction are thoroughly scrutinised in compliance with the Ghana Accessibility Standards.

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In 2016, the government launched the Ghana Standards on Accessibility Design Document in Accra, which provides specifications on how buildings, roads, and recreational centres should be designed to make them accessible to all, especially persons with disabilities. Sections of the Disability Act, 2006 (Act 715), specifically in Article 6 (Access to public places), require owners or occupiers of a public place to provide appropriate facilities that make the place accessible to and available for use by persons with disabilities.

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The Act further stipulates that a person who provides service to the public shall put in place the necessary facilities that make the service available and accessible to a person with a disability.

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These sections of the Disability Act have since been incorporated into the Ministry of Works and Housing’s Building Regulations (L.I 2465), which, among other things, require professionals in the built industry to have inclusiveness in all housing designs to adequately address the needs of the disabled and the aged.

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Source: The Independent Ghana

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