The Achimota Melcom Shopping Mall disaster was one incident that threw the country into several days of mourning in the year 2012.
That horrifying incident happened a few months after sitting President, Prof. John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills, had passed on.
The entire country was traumatised in the wee hours of Wednesday, 7 November, 2012 when it was reported that the Melcom building at Achimota, Accra, had collapsed, trapping several workers.
Fourteen (14) were officially confirmed dead with a total of 70 persons rescued with various degrees of injury from the rubbles of the collapsed six-storey shopping complex.
Compensations were paid to the victims of the disaster.
Preliminary report by an eleven-member committee set up by the Ghana Institute of Engineers after the disaster blamed the use of sub-standard materials in the construction of the building.
According to the President of the Institute, Amoani Yankson, they found that there was no reinforcement in the columns that held the building, low based concrete strength among others.
?The internal column in the building was overloaded. That is the findings that have come out. From our preliminary report, this failure could not have been caused by the soil condition. The materials used in constructing the structure were very weak,? Mr. Yankson disclosed at a press confrence while making their findings known to the public.
He further affirmed that the initial test on the concrete was not encouraging, but added a detailed work will be done on it.
The incident prompted the subsequent arrest and detention of the owner of the building, Nana Nkansah Boadu Ayeboafo, by operatives of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI).
Despite the need to cause investigations into the strength of high buildings in the capital city, the AMA has done very litle about the issue.
Investigations into the continuous springing up of high buildings in the capital has heightened our fear for 2013, as more of such disasters are imminent if proactive measures are not taken by city authorities.
Most of these buildings, the paper discovered, have weak foundations as they are constructed with poor materials.
In Accra, for instance, most of them are constructed out of the rubbles of buildings erected in the early part of the 20th Century.
These buildings in known localities such as Adabraka, the Central Business District (CBD), Asylum Down, Ridge, and Circle were built on the remains of colonial buildings.
?Owners of these buildings are simply refusing to pull them down and build new ones with strong foundations?they are choosing to just build on them?,? a concerned citizen, Kwame Ayi-Quaye, told Today.
The reason for such practice, he revealed, was the refusal of owners to pay compensation to all aggrieved parties involved in the sale of plots of land to new developers.
According to Ayi-Quaye, his fear is further heightened when he travels around places like Airport Residential Area where in spite of its strateggic location, high buildings with weak foundations continue to spring up.
The location and the building of a media house (name withheld) in the capital city was also cited as an example.
In this instance, Today was told that the owner of the media house could not satisfy all the factions involved in the sale and hence the aggrieved party had to sell half of the plot earmarked for a parking lot to another developer.
That situation, Today gathered, has led to massive congestion on the compound of the media house, due largely to the lack of a parking lot.
In the wake of the Melcom disaster, city authorities were urged to ensure that most of the buildings in the capital city had proper permits.
The Melcom and other national disaters which are caused by the negligence of governmnet officials make it imperative for the election of district assembly members and district/municipal/metropolitan chief executives.
In that sense, persons with appointments such as DCEs and MMCEs will be made accountable to the people who elected them, and will also be held responsible if they fail to do what is expected of them.
A NEWS DESK REOPRT
