Enforce building regulations - Asamoah-Boateng

The Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment, Mr Stephen Asamoah-Boateng, has asked building inspectors in Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies to strictly enforce building regulations to help stem the tide of shoddy works on buildings and their attendant collapse.
He said from hence building inspectors together with their various district, municipal and metropolitan engineers with whose jurisdiction a building collapses could be held liable.
The Minister said there was the need to ensure that the right thing was being done in the building industry.
Mr Asamoah Boateng said this when he met staff of the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) at the beginning of a two-week official tour of the Ashanti Region.
The tour would enable him inspect ongoing government projects and programmes and projects.
In December, last year, a five-storey building belonging to the OA Travel and Tours at Asafo in Kumasi collapsed and resulted in the death of two people.
In early 2006, another storey building at Bantama opposite the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) also collapsed and resulted in some fatalities.
Mr Asamoah Boateng said the Ministry was very much concerned about the spate of the collapses and charges building inspectors to constantly go out and check the state of buildings.
He asked them not to hesitate to demolish any building which had no building permit.
Mr Asamoah Boateng inspected a number of projects in the Metropolis, which included the City Hotel complex, Asafo Interchange, Kumasi Landfill site, Asafo Market, Jackson Park and Kwadaso market.
The Minister said he had four priorities which he intended to implement to the letter at the Ministry.
This included service delivery, Sanitation, decentralisation and team work.
He said his ministry was working on making some changes in various by-laws at the districts to ensure effective compliance.
"For example were exact fines are quoted in the by-laws, we want to change it to penalty points so that the fines don't depreciate with inflation", he said.
Mr Asamoah Boateng also paid a courtesy call on the Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr E. A. Owusu Ansah.
Mr Owusu Ansah appealed to Mr Asamoah Boateng to concentrate more on feeder roads in the region.
He said the feeder roads in the region were in very deplorable state and needed to be worked on since rural communities depended on those roads so much in getting foodstuffs to urban centres.