Ensuring integrity of buildings: MMDAs must step up education of developers — IET

The Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Ghana, has called on metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) to educate developers on the need to engage the services of professionals in their work.

It also urged developers to ensure that the necessary permits were secured from the assemblies for their projects.

That, it said, was to help adhere to building regulations to ensure the safety of their property.

“The various assemblies should be educating the public on their local radios and information centres on the need for developers to engage professionals and go through the processes to get their permit.

It is for their own good,” the President of the IET, Ghana, Henry Kwadwo Boateng, told the Daily Graphic in Accra.

Early this month, three multi-storey buildings collapsed at three different locations within a spate of one week.

They comprised a six-storey building under construction at the University for Development Studies (UDS) City Campus at Sagnarigu in Tamale in the Northern Region, a three-storey building at Nanakrom in the Adentan

Municipality as well as a three-storey building under construction at the SDA Junction at the Adentan side of La-Nkwantanang Madina in Accra.

The last incident resulted in the death of one person, with three others sustaining injuries.

In October 2020, 22 people lost their lives when a five-storey church building collapsed at Akyem Batabi in the Eastern Region.

Earlier in July 2015, three people were killed, with 18 others sustaining injuries when a three-storey building collapsed at Cantonments in Accra.

Fire service

Responding to the recent collapses, the Ghana National Fire Service said management had observed that the unfortunate structural collapses mostly happened with buildings under construction with weak foundations, reduction in reinforcement, reduction in concrete strength, poor supervision and the use of poor quality building materials, among others.  

It charged developers to desist from engaging the services of uncertified development practitioners.

Mr Boateng also called on the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA) to strengthen its enforcement and monitoring of substandard building materials on the market to ensure that those used were of high quality.

That, he said, was because there were lots of inferior goods being brought onto the market, hence the need to step up monitoring.

“Again, the standards authority must also sit up because we have a lot of inferior goods being imported.

If you look at our reinforcement which we call iron bars – the sizes and their quality must be looked at.

This is because half inch now is not half inch, they have reduced it,” he emphasised.

Moreover, he charged persons constructing churches and mosques to acquire permits and use registered professionals for their projects.

Recently, the IET Ghana, a registered licensed professional engineering body, said politicians should be partly-blamed for collapsed buildings.

That, it said, was in addition to the failure of developers engaging the services of professionals to do their work for them.

Moreover, the institution said local engineers were not given the necessary tools and resources which included vehicles to go round for inspections and rebound or smith hammer for testing concrete, among others.

It, therefore, asked politicians to stop interfering in the work of engineers in order to do their work as professionals by ensuring that developers adhered to building standards so as to prevent their infrastructure from collapsing.

“To make things worse is when our engineers at the local authorities embark on development control by going round to inspect buildings under construction.

There are some places you would go and the politician would tell you not to go to such places again,”  Mr Boateng, said