Adenta collapsed building: Preliminary investigations reveal structure had no permit - MCE

The Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) of the La-Nkwantanag Madina Municipal Assembly, Jennifer Dede Adjabeng has indicated the assembly will take the necessary action against the developer of the collapsed building after the full investigation is completed.

Her comments come after the building, which collapsed when the developer was attempting to finish the project in a very short period, was found out to be without a permit.

According to the MCE, her outfit will have an emergency meeting with the security services and the necessary stakeholders to determine what action to take against the developer.

“We’d allow the police to assist the assembly to do its investigations and based on the outcome, in line with the Building Regulation Act that the assembly works with, we will take an action on the developer. We will have and emergency meeting, bring all the key stakeholders together,” she said.

She further added that as an assembly, they exist to ensure buildings in the assembly are put up in the accordance with the regulations of the assembly.

“Often times developers feel that they do not want to pay for their building permit, but it goes beyond just the payment. The assembly’s mandate is to ensure that, first the area in question is permitted for the development you want to do. Also, whatever structure you are putting up, the Assembly guides you through the process until you are done with the construction of the building, so that at the end of the day we are not losing lives, because what we are seeing here today, is very unfortunate but avoidable only if the developer had worked with the assembly” she added.

The MCE, Jennifer Dede Adjabeng, further cautioned that buildings developers without building permits should do well to visit the assembly and have that corrected.

“So, we are going all out after such developers. So, if you are a developer or you are an owner of a property you are developing without the permit, I believe this is the time to quickly come to the assembly and then together we would ensure that the right thing is done,” she said.

Background:

On Monday afternoon, a building under construction, collapsed and one person was trapped under the story building in the Madina constituency.

The Member of Parliament, Francis-Xavier Sosu, who made the disclosure via his Facebook in a Facebook LIVE video that showed rescue work ongoing at the site of the incident.

In a subsequent video shared hours later, personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), police and the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) were seen at the scene continuing with the rescue exercise.

Videos sighted by GhanaWeb shows earth-moving equipment removing iron rods from the rubble and other building material.

Neither the police nor fire officials have confirmed the MP's account of a trapped person nor has a rescue been announced.

The Greater Accra Regional Director of the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), Archibald Cobbina, disclosed that the cause of the building collapse at Adenta West, Madina, is due to the use of inferior building materials.

He explained that it had been discovered, from initial observations at the site of the building collapse, that the materials used in the construction were of very low standards.

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