NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 19 – Five bodies have been retrieved from a building that collapsed at Sunstar Hotel, Murang’a County on Friday.
Transport and Infrastructure Cabinet Secretary James Macharia confirmed Sunday that one person who was injured following the collapse of the four-storey building, succumbed to his injuries in hospital, pushing the total number of casualties to six.
Macharia stated that when the incident happened on Friday, there were about 58 people at the construction site pointing out that all were accounted for except eight.
“With recovery of five bodies it means there are still three unaccounted for and we shall only confirm when this job is completed what happened to those three,” he said during the visit to the site.
The CS stated they expect the rescue operation involving officers from the Kenya Defence Forces, National Youth Service, County Fire Services Department, the Kenya Red Cross among others to be completed by the end of the day on Sunday adding that 75 per cent of the operation was already done.
“For us in national government we are here to make sure that we make it absolutely clear that the kind of negligence and lack of due diligence in the construction industry where some elements in the construction sector are letting our country down,” he said.
He added that there are many construction activities across the country calling on developers to be careful to avoid the recurrence of such kind of incidences which he said “negates all the good work which has been done”
“Greed should not be the determining factor that you want to build very quickly, so that you can start getting returns on your investment. That cannot be the guiding factor, it must be safety of the people who are doing the construction and the people who will use it once it is completed,” the CS said.
CS Macharia stated that the government had embarked on investigations to ensure those culpable are brought to book.
“The Directorate of Criminal Investigations has already started the process of hunting down whoever is concerned developer, the professionals, the architects, engineers concerned both at the National government and at the county level,” the Transport CS stated.
He called on county governments across the country to take their responsibility seriously before issuing out the construction permits to prevent recurrence of such disasters.
“We don’t want county governments just to be collecting fees, we want them to do it diligently to make sure that they do their bit in liaison with the National Construction Authority (NCA),” he added.
Macharia said he had instructed the national building inspectorate to fast track the audits and bring down all the unsafe buildings across the country.
He pointed out that the last time they conducted an audit, about four thousand buildings had been marked unsafe in the country.
