Kenya’s housing developers call for quality control in the industry

@steveumidha

The Kenya Property Developers Association (KPDA) decrying the poor state of selected buildings across the country, has called on government to conduct thorough and systematic inspection on upcoming structures to avoid future collapse of buildings.

“There’s lack of professionalism at most stages of bringing up buildings and the inspection from government bodies tasked with overseeing the sector has been low,” KPDA’s Chairman Mucai Kunyiha said yesterday.

The admission by KPDA comes amid public outcry pointed at the government’s inability to crackdown the long-running rogue builders that continue to invade the industry.

The deterioration according to most industry players, appears to run deep and wide in the sector after reports revealed that other than the increasing lack of professionalism in the sector, outdated and weak laws are other industry’s fatal flaw.

In May this year, the National Construction Authority (NCA) was compelled to commence a countrywide demolishing of houses deemed unfit to live in after a building in Huruma estate in Nairobi collapsed and claimed 42 lives.

Officials from NCA said at the time that a countrywide demolishing of shaky and substandard houses or those built on unsafe grounds.

The authority in collaboration with Buildings Inspectorate is yet to release an official breakdown of a building audit detailing the numbers of demolished buildings.

Buildings Inspectorate had at that period releasing a report showing that more than half of the 2,260 buildings in selected estates in Nairobi between January and February, were in “very urgent” need of inspection.