The number of people who died when 5- storied Kyaseka Building along Makerere Hill road collapsed on Monday afternoon has increased.
According to the police director in charge of fire and rescue services, Joseph Mugisa, more bodies were retrieved at night as his team continued with excavation works under floodlights.
“We continued with our search and last night between 1 am and 3 am, we retrieved 3 more bodies and took them to Mulago hospital for postmortem,” Mugisa told journalists adding that the total number of dead people has risen to 4.
This was however, inconsistent with the earlier reports on Monday evening that had indicated that the death toll was at 3 by the end of the day.
Chimpreports has positively identified 3 of the deceased as Rashid Kyobe, Isaac Bukenya and Emmanuel Kirumba.
Efforts are still ongoing to recover more survivors and bodies from the rubble
According to the police fire brigade director, 4 people have so far been rescued alive.
Mugisa said the search and rescue mission is still ongoing, with hope to find more survivors still trapped under the debris.
“What is clear now is that the building didn’t collapse because of natural factors like a storm, earth quake or floods,” Mugisa explained.
He added that they are still unable to pinpoint the number of people who were in the building at the time of the collapse. The owner is said to be on the run.
Negligence
Meanwhile Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago told reporters that the cause of the accident was likely negligence on the side of the building proprietor and engineers.
“It is such a tragedy but in my observation, it is because of negligence by the owner of the building and the engineers,” Lukwago said while touring the site on Tuesday.
“I have always complained that many structures are coming up in unclear circumstances as many proprietors beat the system to build without certification from KCCA.”
The Kampala Lord Mayor said that both KCCA and government engineers have a lot of questions to answer in regard to many buildings in the city that have been erected in road reserves and how their owners get occupational permits.
“This building was an accident in the waiting because of the laxity of the directors of physical planning and civil engineering in KCCA.”