PHNOM PENH, Jan. 7 (Xinhua) -- A Cambodian court has granted bail to the owners of a six-story building that collapsed on Friday, leaving 36 people dead and 23 others injured, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
"Judge Long Kespirom, president of the Kampot Provincial Court, decided to release the building's owners, a man and his wife, on bail on Monday evening," Mann Boreth, a spokesman for the Kampot Provincial Court, told Xinhua.
"But the judge decided to place the couple under the court's supervision, not allowing them to leave Cambodia," he said.
The owners of the collapsed building were identified as Ek Sarun and his wife Chhiv Sothy, both are Cambodians.
The under-construction guesthouse building came down at around 4:30 p.m. local time on Friday in Kep city in southwestern Kep province when workers were pouring concrete to build the seventh floor.
All victims were Cambodians, and among them were a male-contractor, construction workers and their family members, including children.
As a probe has been conducted, Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen blamed a male-contractor, who was also killed in the rubble, for the collapse of the building.
"A preliminary probe indicated that there were two mistakes already," he said in a press conference on Sunday at the end of the 43-hour search and rescue operation.
First, the contractor used smaller steel bars than the steel bars required in the building's masterplan and second, the contractor removed the wooden scaffolding supporting wet concrete slabs in 10 days, as the safe period for the removal was 28 days, he said.
"The contractor's mistake resulted in this tragedy," Hun Sen said.
