Parliament, city engineers and demolition cocktail

The ongoing cocktail of demolition operations across the urban divide is unprecedented, worrying but not surprising.

It amplifies the extent of illegal, unauthorised and unsafe buildings, besides a growing number of squatter settlements across the urbanised areas. 

It also reflects how far the country has come in legislating, regulating and enforcing building laws.  

Such heart-rending law enforcement offensives unleashed by aggrieved public and private sector entities aided by the security agencies are nothing new. These events are neither the first nor the last to occur.

The recurring losses and heartaches certainly are huge, disturbing and requiring lasting mitigating antidotes. Since it began a few months ago, the demolition sword has not ceased swinging despite Parliament’s intervention in the Adjei-Kojo fray.

The demolition wave has moved to Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi,  Adentan, Afariwaa in Tema to Accra, raising concern and panic of residents and developers in similar affected areas.

The near-violent confrontations between some local legislators and the armed demolition squads are unfortunate and worrying.

Parliament’s quick trial or investigation of a law enforcer than law breakers is similarly worrying in this era of indiscipline. The controversial stance of the state relief agency has also sent mixed signals likely to embolden plunderers of state assets. More disturbing is the commando-style rapid deployment to smash-before-dawn syndrome, which has exacerbated the tension and anxiety surrounding the demolition crisis. Managing the fallout is crucial. To unearth the root cause and proffer an effective panacea to such dreadful enforcement actions is equally and definitely critical.

Demolition is a surgery-like process involving the methodical but forceful dismembering of unwanted parts or whole sections of structures. These demolition operations lately are largely for land repossession and redevelopment purposes.

Buildings can also be brought down for repair reasons, extension or completely new works, accessibility and prevention of imminent building failure. Other abrupt and forceful removal of occupied buildings and related structures are termed ‘evictions’. 

The physical outlook of some suburbs and neighbourhoods of Accra, for instance, are sure candidates for demolition visitations. Also included are massive encroachment on state-acquired lands (Atraco); dehumanising squatter enclaves (Sodom & Gomorrah); increasing developments on waterways (Sakaman); dilapidated, collapsing and abandoned structures at James Town, Opera Square and old UTC complex.    

These demolition encounters are the result of the total breakdown of building regulatory administration and related enforcement systems. Local authorities have failed to appreciate the exigencies of building control, de-emphasising it in their scheme of things. 

A key failure is the lack of preventive demolition to mitigate the demolition headache of today. As far back as the latter part of the nineteenth century, the then Accra City Council was administering building permits and related enforcement actions.

The 1930 and 1944 Accra Building Regulations did not gather dust on the shelves but was actively applied across many suburbs of then Accra. The City Engineer’s Office was visibly relentless in enforcing discipline in the building construction and regulatory sector. 

Today, this pioneer regulatory entity is a pale shadow of its former self for obvious reasons. Subsequent enactment into law of the existing National Building Regulation L.I. 1630 in 1996 did no good as it failed to provide for an enforcement arm to apply provisions in the new law.        

The demolition phenomenon featuring the courts and security agencies fronting the enforcement drive is unusual but critical in times of crisis. The crises on hand include an acute non compliance with rules and regulations governing the physical environment; the ever-increasing building safety violations; the extensive encroachment and consequent loss of chunks of state and public lands; the loss of legally acquired lands by individuals and real estate developers to land racketeers buttress the need for the police and military presence in the demolition fray. 

The Melcom building disaster never taught us any lesson. Such a major calamity did not engender a thorough parliamentary investigation, nor a commission of inquiry to chart a way forward. It has been a cover-up here and there. Strangely, an innocent past city engineer and building inspector whose enforcement powers were obliterated, if not blunted by L. I. 1630, was used as a cat’s paw – paraded and humiliated before the media - to deflect responsibility. 

Until effective building control management systems are considered and developed, prioritising preventive alternatives to demolitions manned by a specific technical arm of the state (City Engineers), given adequate room to operate, the recourse to massive, heart-rending and frequent demolition operations cannot be avoided or postponed.   

The author is an Architect

Writer’s e-mail: syakoto2000@yahoo.com