• Death toll rose to 10 on Sunday as rescue operation officially closed on Monday afternoon.
The owner of the six-storey building that collapsed in Tassia is well known to 'big shots' and may not be easily arrested, a police source has said.
The death toll from the tragedy rose to 10 on Sunday with the rescue operation officially closing on Monday afternoon.
Residents have demanded the owner of the building be arrested.
“The woman who owns this building and tens of others around the city is well known to the high and mighty. There is no office in this land which she doesn’t get into,” the police source told reporters in confidence at the scene as rescue efforts continued on Sunday.
He did not reveal the woman’s identity.
The building was in a precarious shape months before the tragedy and the officer wondered why tenants continued living in the houses.
“This building was actually inhabitable. As you can see, it doesn’t even have beams. The construction materials used here were visibly substandard. Look at those wires. This is serious,” the officer said pointing at the rubble.
A two-storey mabati structure that was adjacent to the building was pulled down during the operations while those living in neighbouring houses were ordered to vacate.
The Association of Construction Managers of Kenya blamed the tragedy on corrupt government agencies. Its chairman Nashon Okowa said the National Building Inspectorate should make public a report on unsafe buildings in the city.
He said such buildings should be publicised in the dailies.
“Two or three years ago, the President commissioned the National Buildings Inspectorate to do a report on the state of buildings in Nairobi. That report was done and it is out indicting several buildings that we don’t know about,” Okowa said.
He was speaking to reporters at the scene of the Tassia tragedy on Sunday.
“We have urged the National Building Inspectorate to release the report of the indicted buildings and who owns them. Probably, the Tassia building could be among those condemned in the report.”
He said the National Construction Authority should take responsibility for the collapse of buildings across the country.
“The issues that we have in this country are not because of a lack of law, but because people are sleeping on the job. County governments issue approvals and are mandated by the law to supervise constructions in different stages,” Okowa said.
edited by p. obuya