By Juliet Nanziri,
NATIONAL
Works and Transport industry is seeking for a review to amend the Building Control Act, 2013 to include provisions that punish landlords, site owners in instances where buildings collapse and cause deaths.
This has been revealedb by works minister Gen. Katumba Wamala at the Kampala City Building baraza held yesterday (June 23) at Bat Valley primary school playgrounds.
The existing law gives the National Building Review Board (NBRB) mandate to monitor building developments, ensure that the design and construction of buildings and oversee, inspect and monitor the operations of Building Committee among other roles.
However, minister Katumba says they have since realized that the board is not mandated by the law to hold illegal builders, landlords and Site owners accountable which the amendment seeks to address.
“Where somebody has unprofessionally constructed a building and it collapses and kills people, that person should be liable to pay for the dead and whatever destruction has happened but in the current law, it is not provided,” Katumba told journalists.
Building sites are becoming a death trap in Kampala. And a survey conducted by the National Building Review Bureau in 2021 revealed that 88 percent of the buildings do not comply with provisions in the Building Control Act, 2013 putting lives of users at risk. Findings of the board have hitherto identified substandard construction materials, quack workers and tenuous supervision of sites as the major cause of accidents.
