On Saturday afternoon, a building under construction collapsed in Mbale City. Observers note that the incident underscores the risks of construction shortcuts.
A five-storey building in Kachumbala Cell, Namakwekwe Ward, Mbale City, collapsed, resulting in the death of 37-year-old foreman Andrew Wonyakala and injuring three others. The collapse also destroyed two neighboring homes, displacing families.
As the situation unfolds, the tragedy highlights failures in technical standards, regulatory oversight, and ethical responsibility.Mbale is going through a construction boom right from the time the Municipality was elevated to city status.
The skyline is being replaced by storied buildings or vertical buildings.However, amidst the rush, the technical integrity of these new towers is a mirage.
The tragedy on Saturday has become the talk in the city. Some have attributed it to a combination of factors, including the use of substandard and counterfeit materials, poor or no supervision from the City.
Engineer Dan Mukwana, a private engineer within Mbale city, says authorities in the City Council, particularly in the City Engineer’s department, could have slept on the job.
He revealed that the wrong size of iron bars was being used to put up a structure of that magnitude. He wondered why one would use T12 (12mm) reinforcement bars in primary load-bearing columns. According to Mukwana, the size of steel bars is only recommended for domestic bungalows, not five-storey buildings.
He suggests that T16 steel bars should be used in the construction of such a building.”You cannot defy gravity with ‘copy-paste’ engineering. They cast heavy, solid concrete slabs, adding tons of ‘dead load’ onto columns that lacked the tensile strength to hold them. When the weight reached a tipping point, the building didn’t lean; it pancaked,” he explained.
The construction had been going on for the last five months. Engineer Mukwana wondered about the possibility that the City Engineer and his/her juniors could have failed to notice the technical deficiencies had they been inspecting its progress. The Northern Division headquarters is barely 100 meters away from the collapsed building.
Robert Kisesi, the speaker of the Northern City Division Council, wondered if the Engineer in charge of the Division ever inspected the building from the time construction started.
Under the Building Control Act, there are mandatory “interruption points” where inspectors must verify the foundation and the steel reinforcement before a single drop of concrete is poured.
Kazibwe John, a resident of Mbale City, said the City’s physical planner and the Engineer should be held culpable. “The Engineer or the Physical Planner should come out and tell the public why this building collapsed. They keep on clearing developers to continue with construction,” he said.
One of the masons, who talked on condition of anonymity, said the disaster was predictable, noting that they raised concerns about the quality of the materials on site.”We told the boss the columns were too thin. We told him the concrete was still wet, but he told us to keep pouring,” he said.
Mbale City’s Public Relations Officer, James Kutosi, told journalists on Monday during a press briefing that there was no approved plan for the collapsed building.
“I have just told you that there were no approved plans for that building, and if there are no approved plans, then there is no way a city engineer can go supervising that work, until, unless otherwise we have been lied to and the plans were approved, that’s when we can find the engineer culpable,” he said. Kutosi said the Council has ordered an investigation into the matter.
“The council has instituted an urgent and independent investigation into the circumstances surrounding this collapse to establish the cause of the incident, determine whether there was any breach of approved building standards, regulatory requirements, or dereliction of duty by any responsible persons or offices,” he said.
Asked if the law was followed to the dot, James Kutosi told journalists that this formed the basis of setting up an investigation committee, which he said those are some of the terms of reference that the committee would follow. “That is why this committee was formed,” he said, adding that by Friday, the report of the committee will be out for the public.
Until the city enforces its own codes, the rising towers in Mbale City will remain a gamble one where the house, eventually, always loses. According to the Building ACT, 2026, as amended, a person who intends to carry out a building operation shall apply to the Building Committee in the area in which he or she intends to carry out the building operation for a building permit.
The application for a building permit according to the ACT shall be in a form prescribed by the Board, and shall contain the name and physical and postal address of the applicant, be accompanied by the land title or other proof of ownership of the land and where the applicant is not the owner of the land on which the building operation is to be carried out, contain the name of the landowner, the land title or other proof of ownership of the land and a statement of the legal relationship between the applicant and the landowner.
The act further requires that the application form contain the name, registration number and a copy of the practising certificate of the architect and his or her signature, and official stamp of the Uganda Society of Architects and in the case of an engineer, a certificate of good structural practice which shall be accompanied by such number of copies of building plans and other documents as may be required by regulations and also contain a letter from the Chairperson of the Village Council of the area in which the building operation is to be carried out. URN