Resource MMDAs works departments - IET-Ghana President charges govt
The government has been called upon to adequately resource the works departments of the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs).
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This is to enable the departments and the assemblies to execute their mandates effectively.
The President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology-Ghana, Henry Kwadwo Boateng, who made the call, named the resources to include vehicles and schmidt hammer or rebound hammer used to carry on site checks of concretes.
That, he said, was in addition to other quality assurance tools, including personal protective equipment, drones for surveillance and effective monitoring, scanners, odometers, and external back-up hard drives, adding that “if you resource them and they are unable to perform, then you have a cause to question their work”.
Mr Boateng told the Daily Graphic that the main issue had to deal with vehicles to move around the various sites daily “because our development is such that if you leave a developer a week or two without checking on what he or she is doing, by the time you get to their site they would have got to the roofing level”.
He said a lot could be done to help the works departments of the MMDAs to function optimally.
“I would appreciate the efforts made by the government as it has done a lot of recruitments for the assemblies, especially in the works departments.
It has brought built environment professionals that include construction technologists or building technologists, civil engineers, quantity surveyors and spatial planning officers,” he said.
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Outsourcing works
Mr Boateng said most assemblies, however, did not have architects, stressing that the situation was not helpful because architects were crucial in the built environment.
He said the assemblies could outsource work in areas they did not have the professionals or other experts to complement the efforts of the works departments.
At a ceremony to induct 55 newly qualified architects, the Minister of Works and Housing, Francis Asenso-Boakye, urged MMDAs to consider outsourcing the issuance of development and building permits to relevant professional bodies within the built environment space.
That, he said, would enhance town planning and reduce challenges such as flooding and the recent phenomenon of the collapse of buildings in the country.
Mr Boateng said “one assembly should not have engineers only or quantity surveyors, you must have an architect, a quantity surveyor, engineer and a spatial planning officer so that it would be balanced to form a strong team to properly scrutinise designs that come before them before permits are issued”.
He said post permit supervision was very important.
Structure
“This means that if you want to put up your structure, before you set up the building lines, we must come and do inspection (to check) whether where you have positioned the structure is the same on the block plan.
We must also look at the foundation that was approved to see whether it is what has been done,” he said.
The IET President said each of the 13 stages in building construction must be certified by the works department before a developer could continue with their project.
When all that was done, he said, officers, who approved of collapsed buildings, could then be held responsible.