Non-Professionals To Blame For High Number Of Collapsed Buildings – Engineering Council

The Engineering Council of Ghana has disclosed that one of the key causes of high-rise building collapses in the country is the involvement of non-professionals.

This follows the collapse of several high-rise buildings this year, many of which resulted in the death of some persons.

At the inauguration of the Engineering Council and Ghana Standards Authority joint committee, Board Chairman of the Engineering Council of Ghana, Dr Kwame Boakye, said his outfit will soon make its findings public.

“What we have observed is that people tend not to use competent professionals in designing, building, and supervising these structures.

“The forensic team will get all the facts, and in due time, we will hold a section with the public to make the facts known,” he said.

He added that several other factors also contributed to the disasters and admonished developers to employ the services of professionals.

About nine deaths and 66 injuries have been recorded in 12 separate structural collapses in eight regions within the past five months.

On May 1, 2023, an uncompleted three-storey building collapsed at SDA Junction at Adentan in Accra, where one person died, and two construction workers suffered serious injuries.

A 5-year-old girl was crushed to death while her sibling was seriously injured by a collapsed building at Ada Magazine in the Eastern Region during a rainstorm on May 21, 2023.

In another incident, a collapsed building in Nyangua, a suburb of Navrongo in the Upper East Region, claimed the lives of two children after a heavy downpour on the night of June 19, 2023.

Two weeks ago, a father and son tragically lost their lives after a building in which they were sleeping collapsed on them in the Wa West District.