AMMAN — Senate President Faisal Al-Fayez
on Sunday asked that the reasons for the collapse of the
Jabal Luweibdeh
residential building be found and that parties responsible for it be held
accountable, local media outlets reported.
اضافة اعلان
Fayez also stressed the need for the Greater Amman
Municipality (GAM) and the concerned authorities in all governorates to form
specialized committees of public and private sectors representatives to
determine the level of safety of old buildings and to address any issues that
may exist.
Fayez called for scrupulous observance of the
requirements needed to grant building licenses and for stopping the abuses that
occur. He stressed that building licenses should not be granted without the
approval of the supervising engineering office that is responsible for the
construction, in accordance with the specifications and conditions required to
guarantee a safe implementation.
Fayez, who made these statements during his visit to
the Public Security Directorate, expressed appreciation for the efforts made by
the
Civil Defense, Public Security, and the Gendarmerie cadres over several
days, following the collapse of the Luweibdeh building, which left 14 dead and
10 injured.
Also on Sunday, Amman Public Prosecutor Thaer Nassar
started listening to testimonies of survivors of the collapsed Luweibdeh
building, according to a local media outlet, while GAM’s Higher Construction
Committee began collecting samples from the site of the collapsed building and
those surrounding it, to assess whether they are ready for the return of their
residents, GAM spokesperson Nasser Al-Rahamneh was reported by Al-Mamlaka TV as
saying.
Rahamneh said that GAM has taken all precautions so
that the evacuated residents living close to the collapsed building face no
problem upon return, adding that a decision will be taken on the basis of the
reports of the relevant committees.
Clearing the site of the collapsed four-story
building remains challenging; GAM workers opened a road by the building
overlooking the street to introduce medium and heavy machinery in order to
complete the removal of debris, said Rahamneh.
Meanwhile, a member of the Engineering Offices
Council from the Engineering Association, Ahmed Ghannam, said that maintenance
work in apartments and old buildings should be carried out under the
supervision of a specialized engineering office, to prevent a recurrence of the
Luweibdeh incident.
Ghannam told a local TV outlet on Saturday that in
2018, the association warned about the possibility of such accidents occurring
in old buildings, and that it issued instructions regulating the restoration
and maintenance of buildings in general, and of old buildings in particular.
He said that what happened in Luweibdeh may happen
in other areas due to GAM’s failure to monitor buildings.
Architect Fares Baqain told the same TV outlet that
what happened in Luweibdeh should ring the “alarm bell”, stressing, however,
that not all old buildings have weak structures, and that the foundations of
some are even better than those of modern buildings.
He said that a large percentage of construction
works in the capital does not follow the needed engineering regulations, and
that laws are breached when qualified contractors who sign a contract to build
leave the construction to subcontractors who may not be qualified to do so.
He also said that some engineering offices sell
fictitious supervision contracts at the lowest prices, and that some projects
that require the presence of a resident engineer do not comply and use
fictitious appointees, a practice that is still going on.
The head of the Housing Investors Association
Kamal Al-Awamleh corroborated the claim, saying that there is corruption in the fake
purchase of engineers’ services.
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