NAIROBI, Jan. 19 (Xinhua) -- Kenya is seeking foreign technology in order to boost its building safety, the industry regulatory said on Tuesday.
Maurice Akech, CEO National Construction Authority (NCA) told journalists in Nairobi that research has indicated that the probability of building failure in the country is 35 percent, implying that the risk of failure in the functionality of a built structure in Kenya remains high.
"In order to improve building safety, we have identified the issue of international coordination and collaboration so that the figure of unsafe buildings reduces in the next few years," Akech said during the NCA research forum.
Akech said that Kenya is looking at countries around the world especially in Europe and Asia where it can borrow appropriate construction technology.
The east African nation is also studying the technology and building material that is used in other countries to ensure that Kenyan buildings, including high rise structures are safe for occupancy.
The construction regulator said that it has developed an implementation matrix that consists of multiple agencies in order to eliminate the presence of unsafe buildings in the country.
"Each agency in the team will play a specific role to reduce the incidence of collapsing buildings in the country," Akech said.
He noted that unsafe buildings have been a prevalent problem in the industry for a long time which needs a holistic and strategic approach including the review of the development control framework to prominently accommodate building controls.
He observed that the research on building failures has provided critical information that spurred the drafting of the national building regulations, also referred to as the building code.
"We are about to embark on the stakeholder validation stage and hope to finalize the same in the coming weeks," Akech added. Enditem
