The National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) has ruled out lack of maintenance culture as the cause of the Accra mall ceiling collapse.
Parts of the ceiling at the mall square of the popular shopping centre in the capital caved in Thursday causing fear and panic among shoppers.
At least three people “sustained minor” injuries with the police and fire service personnel arriving at the scene to avert chaos.
President Akufo-Addo said he was “disturbed” about the incident.
Tweeting from the US on an official working visit, he decried the poor maintenance culture in the country, urging facility managers to “improve our maintenance culture.”
NADMO’s Director of man-made disaster and fires Mohammed Abubakar Tchafaram, however, told Starr News the near-fatal disaster was not due to lack of maintenance.
“I won’t say it has to do with maintenance. You know, anything that is actually constructed by human beings will definitely face some of these challenges. This facility has been in use for more than ten years or let me say about ten years now,” he told Starr Today’s Naa Dedei Tetteh.
“Periodically, they have been maintaining it. But if you look at the section that caved in, it is just a small section of the ceiling. So I wouldn’t say that they have not been maintaining. From time to time they have been maintaining it but definitely…as you know something that has been done by human beings, we will once in a while see some of these challenges or problems,” he stressed.
That notwithstanding, he said the disaster management body will soon carry out a full-scale safety assessment of the facility.
Source: Ghana/Starrfmonline.com/103.5FM
