Building codes

Building safety & maintenance should come under SBCA and KMC so they can be held responsible if any accident occurs.

As the city of Karachi grows vertically with more and more skyscrapers being added to its skyline, the government needs to enact and implement proper building laws to make sure the lives of people living or working in these buildings are safe. Recently, several cases of elevator malfunction have surfaced and not everyone was fortunate enough to survive the incident. Several people have died of suffocation as the alarm systems did not work and rescue teams were unable to reach in time.

One of the reasons why such incidents are being reported more frequently is because a large number of residential buildings stretching more than six floors were built around a decade ago. Now, so many years later, their elevators and other provisions have started to deteriorate and require maintenance. Since building laws are hardly implemented, the residents and visitors to these buildings suffer when the elevators malfunction.

According to a city traders’ association representative, hardly 10 per cent of the shopping plazas and residential apartments follow building safety laws. The rest show that they are following procedure on paper only and then fail to provide actual services. Since the Sindh Building Control Authority is only responsible for the initial safety codes adopted by the building at the time of construction, they do not check up on the buildings to make sure the elevators are maintained. Given this situation in which the government authorities refuse to take ownership of the responsibility, it is hardly surprising that private builders take advantage of the lack of laws. The government needs to revise this strategy. It needs to make sure the jurisdiction of both the building authority and the KMC include building safety plus maintenance so they can be held responsible if an unfortunate accident occurs. The law-enforcement agencies also need to treat such cases with urgency and not dismiss them as ‘accidental deaths’. Perhaps an exemplary punishment awarded to one party will deter others from slacking off.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 20^th, 2014.

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