PH building collapse: 150 workers on site when building collapsed – Supervisor

Tina Amanda

A builder and Supervisor, supervising and recruiting skilled and unskilled workers at the construction site of the collapsed seven-storey building, Emmanuel Enyang, have told the Judicial Commission of Inquiry that about one hundred and fifty workers were on the construction site the very day of the collapse.

Enyang said further that the collapsed seven-storey building was originally designed for raft foundation but later changed to piling foundation after a second soil test.

Civil/Structural Engineer, Oti Emmanuel, described the nature of collapse to the panel as a plastic failure of the structure, adding that such collapse could have been caused by excessive dead load and imposed loads on the building.

The Director of Development Control, Ministry of Urban Development and Physical Planning, Mina Aprioku, told the commission that as at the time he visited the collapsed building site in mid 2017, the builders were working in compliance with the approved plan, adding that a team of directors from the ministry also visited the site in 2017 when a woman by name Mrs.Edna Ezekiel Hart brought a complain that debris from the said building is affecting her house.

Aprioku said further that the ministry is short of staff strength and have no professional staff such as Architect, quantity surveyor, engineer, land surveyor which made the ministry employ the services of ad-hoc compliance team to help in the monitoring.

Also, the Director of Building Plan, Ministry of Urban Development and Physical planning, Edmund Obinna, told the panel that the commissioner ordered the owner of the collapsed building during the 2018 revalidation process to produced the original documents of the 2014 approved plan of the building.

He stressed that there is a need for an overhaul in the ministry as the physical planning law of 2013 governing urban development in the state is being breached.

A survivor and a labourer at the collapsed building site, Smith Akaine, explained to the commission that the building collapsed at about 5: pm when the day’s jobs was over and some workers on site have gone to source for what to eat, adding that the building collapsed in cracks of angles and within 10minutes the building came down.

According to him, he was at the rear veranda at the time the building started cracking and was able to escape through a fence and sustained some level of injuries, stressing that he refused to be taken to the hospital but joined in the rescue operation to save some of his fellow workers and friends who were trapped in the building.