2023-07-12 00:59:22
The lifeless bodies of five people were found on Tuesday under the rubble of two buildings under construction which collapsed the day before in a commune in the south of the Guinean capital Conakry, the government announced.
The two buildings collapsed “in the commune of Matoto in Conakry this Monday, July 10, 2023 around 5:00 p.m.,” said the government spokesperson in a statement, adding that “five bodies” were released.
Earlier, a first report drawn up by a municipal official and a worker present on the scene reported “five workers and (one) child under the rubble”, or six people wanted.
The Ministry of Justice ordered the opening of legal investigations, according to the government, which added that the tragedy occurred “on the site of a private developer” who was building social housing.
“It is therefore not the construction of social housing of the State (…) which are concerned by the accident”, further explained the government.
The building that collapsed first “was part of the social housing construction project launched by the Guinean government to house public sector workers,” a local elected official said earlier.
“The workers had already finished the fifth slab and were starting the construction of the sixth when everything collapsed,” testified a worker working on the site.
The building collapsed first, which was adjacent to the second, was in a quiet area of the town of Matoto, between other residential and office buildings, noted an AFP correspondent.
An impressive security system made up of police and gendarmes was deployed on the scene, where civil protection agents and rescuers were working to try to find any survivors under the rubble.
The construction work was carried out by the company MAK BTP, in charge of the construction of social housing in this suburb of Conakry.
Many construction companies have been created in recent years in Guinea by relatives of senior public administration officials. Every year, buildings under construction collapse in Conakry.
The sector suffers in particular from a lack of control of works by the departments of the Ministry of Urban Planning and Housing, suspected of corruption by some site owners.
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