LEIGH PHARMACY ON THE SPOTLIGHT
…DANGEROUS BUILDING AT PMB
Merely two weeks ago, the country was visited by the dreadful disaster of a collapsed seven-storey building that claimed the lives of many men, women and children.
The incident which took place at the densely populated business community of Shell New Road in Kissy, east of Freetown, occured following other incidents of building collapse within the city of Freetown.
The panic instilled in the spirit of people has even not faded yet as the nation still mourns the irreparable loss of precious lives, and some Sierra Leoneans continue in their desperation to build on disaster-prone areas without recourse to the lethal fate their counterparts have succumbed to.
Reports filtering into our news desk before we went to press last evening suggested that a building similar to the collapsed one at Shell currently stands erect at the bridge in Wellington via PMB.
The said building is densely inhabited and fears are now being expressed that since it is built on a site similar to the scene of disaster at Shell New Road, it may collapse at any given time.
It is said that on the front of the building are prominent Fullah businessmen, Amadu Leigh and Tejan Jalloh, among others.
The incident at Shell New Road caught the attention of people more than all previous incidents of like manner because of its dreadful intensity, leaving questions as to why people are building on sloppy grounds or over hilly bridges, and if people’s conscience is bleak as to not able to know a disaster-prone areas for house construction that they are desperate to continue with their building activities. Such individuals are perceived to be unsympathetic to oneself tending to not know what had befallen other families.
Meanwhile, accusing fingers are being pointed at different people in both public and private circles, but the bulk of the blame is on the Lands and Environmental Protection Ministries for giving lands and building permits to people to build on such places.
“People will not build in such places without going through Lands and Environmental Protection Ministries, so we ought to blame them for issuing building documents to them”, said a resident at the community of the collapsed building.
Other fingers point at the unqualified engineers employed and other individuals purporting to have the right to build on such areas.
“Quack builders and their employers compromise in terms of utilizing standard building materials”, said another resident at Ferry Junction.
The people are calling on their government authorities to put stringent measures in place to accurately address an issue that seems to have become a national plague.