Collapsed happened in the buildings on September 9, 2021, and that is why police and rescue teams rushed to Kisneyi, a stone throw city centre.
This collapse happened in one of the buildings under construction, where six lives of casual laborers were lost.
The incident which happened in Kisenyi was not the first incident, and surely it will not be the last.
Some two years back, in 2020, in Makindye, Lukuli, 15 people died after being buried in the rubble of a building that collapsed.
Authorities have quickly launched investigations in all these incidents, yet the findings are never made public.
Various media houses raised the question, “What is the cause of these buildings’ collapses?
Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago says,’ this is clearly ‘corruption’.
The National Building Review Board (NBRB) is mandated to monitor buildings and oversee and inspect building committees’ operations.
It has, over time, published information related to the building they have investigated following the collapse. Most of the findings have raised eyebrows.
Earlier this year, five decisions of Kampala gathered a report in which they stated that more than 500 buildings in the city are either not planned or those who approved as per plans have already shifted from it.
According to the statement of Hakim Kizza, executive secretary, who works and engineering at KCCA, these most buildings belong to the big people of government.
Kizza said, “We have seen many where we authorise like six levels, someone builds twelve. These are also called illegal structures because you have shifted from the approved plan.”
Lukwago, the Kampala Lord Mayor, states this nightmare starts from the fragile and porous systems that deal with the approval of plans, supervision, monitoring and the engineers who do the actual civil works.
Lukwago stated that “Sometimes you get beaten by these systems like the structure we exploded at the Old Taxi park you will ask in the first place how did it reach to that level. By the time it was brought down, they were all on the fourth floor and had no further plans.
He further said that in the case of the Kisenty building, it had no plan from KCCA, but the developer ‘Haruna Ssentongo’ went ahead to construct the building until the building collapsed.
