South C MCA Abass blames County negligence for collapsed building

The area MCA called for investigations into the incident that has led to loss of lives and destruction of property. 

While condoling with affected persons, Abass said preliminary findings point to negligence and oversight failures by the Nairobi City County's Urban Planning Department. 

He said the personnel at the planning, enforcement, development control, architects, surveyors and inspection must be held to account over the incident.

The military joined in the search and rescue mission at the site where police have reported that two people are trapped. 

“We know it is not the first time such an incident happens. The county officials and owners must be held to account for the tragedy,” he said.

According to Abass, he had raised concern on approval and enforcement on the construction of structures in the city but this landed on deaf ears.

“This should be the final incident and must be a lesson. 16 floors are many to collapse and it is an indicator something was wrong all along,” said Khalif.

He also announced a plan to review all approved plans in the area to prevent such future incidents.

This came as emergency service providers camped the scene hours after the incident in efforts to rescue any person who may be trapped in the rubbles.

The guards on duty were missing and efforts to trace them are ongoing.

The building was under construction at the time of the incident but there were no workers on site when it collapsed.

Police who responded to the scene said they had not located the guards who were on duty and efforts to account for them were being made.

Langata police boss Pius Mwanthi said multi agency teams had been deployed to the scene to start digging through to find out if there are casualties there.

He said one man who they believe was a pedestrian was injured and rushed to the hospital.

Police and Nairobi City County officials said the owner and the contractor of the structure were being sought for grilling.