KAMPALA– The Deputy Police spokesperson Polly Namaye said that police have sent special team to look for the site engineer and chief supervisor of the building that collapsed at Madhivan Village in Jinja town killing 5 and leaving several others nursing serious wounds.
Addressing the media on Monday, January 20 at police headquarters in Naguru, Namaye said they have to find out what exactly led to the collapse of the building.
“We have sent out a team that is looking for the site engineer and site supervisor of the site so that we can question them but at the moment they are on the run,” she said.
She added that “Because we want to establish if the construction was done professionally, we want to find out if they used the right material, we want to establish if the people that were managing the site themselves were professional.”
Namaye also revealed that they saved 12 people from the building eight of whom are in a critical situation.
“Five bodies were retrieved, four were identified and one remains unidentified,” said Namaye.
Namaye advised the stakeholders in construction like the city planners to always do their work of monitoring construction sites to prevent incidences of collapsed buildings.
She also urged the public to notify the police whenever they see shady work at construction sites.
The building collapsed at around 5 pm on Wednesday, January 16, 2020.
Mr Simon Kasirye, one of the residents, attributed the collapse of the building to alleged poor workmanship.
“They used little cement and substandard iron bars of 12 millimeters, instead of 16 millimeters. The concrete was also weak,’’ he said.
The Jinja Central Division Chairperson, Mr Mubarak Kirunda, attacked police for delaying to rescue the trapped workers in the building.
“People are using their hands to rescue the trapped workers with no excavators on the ground,” he said.
The Jinja Municipality Speaker, Mr Moses Bizitu, said the building was constructed without supervision from the municipal council engineer.
“There was less supervision, less cement, poor workmanship and police delayed to rescue the situation.
“People are using hoes and axes to retrieve the dead and survivors,” he said.
