Averting disasters through proper planning

DISASTER STRUCK at Gbawe, a suburb of Accra, last Saturday when a storey building under construction collapsed and claimed six lives including the contractor and the wife of the Nigerian, owner of the building, meant for a warehouse.

At the same time the media had also reported of the collapse of a single storey building at an area near East Legon in which four people sustained serious injuries.

Last year, on December 15, 2006, residents of Kumasi were awakened to the tragic news when a four-storey building at the OA Bus Terminal gave way to its weight and collapsed, claiming two lives and damaging property running into billions of cedis.

The occurrence of these incidents is becoming a daily affair except that most of them go without being reported.

While some of the causes of these disasters, which naturally call for public criticism point to negligence of building rules, others have blamed the Statutory Planning Committees of the various Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies for taking building construction for granted by approving applications for development and building permits, resulting in the chaotic development of our cities.

The Chronicle attributes this development to improper planning. For example, the OA disaster was a function of soil and structural failure as well as constructional defects.

It is in view of these that we would want to suggest that Statutory Planning Committees across the country to review all building and development permits while proactive laws that would make it mandatory for private projects to be handled by professionals and qualified ones are enacted. The absence of such laws is an indictment on the Government (past and present).

Bye Laws and regulations on buildings should be critically looked at with the view of making amendments to deter private developers from engaging untrained and wayside technicians with limited knowledge in design and planning and purchasing materials.

Earlier this year, the President of the Ghana Institute of Engineers (GhIE), Dr. Kwabena Sarfo-Debrah expressed regret about the absence of a legislation that regulates and holds people responsible for the negligence.

According to him, recommendations have been made as a result of previous disasters arising out of incompetence on the part of engineers but unfortunately “these recommendations have not been implemented”. How awful!

The Chronicle is very much concerned with these occurrences of late and wants to reiterate the call by the professional engineers to see to the implementation of the proposed recommendations without further delay. This is because we believe the implementation of these recommendations is long overdue. After all, it is cheaper to manage disasters than to rehabilitate victims of disasters.

It is in view of this that we would like to urge all stakeholders of the Building Industry not to hesitate to forward their case for consideration by Parliament before the next disaster strikes.

It is our opinion that the proposed Engineering Bill and the formation of an Engineer Council are worth considering to regulate and control the engineering practice in Ghana.
That is the only way occurrences of disasters in future could be averted. A stitch in time, they say, saves nine.