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Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) on Sunday unveiled plan for the construction of material testing laboratory in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, in a bid to ensure that all ongoing construction works in the territory meet the requisite integrity.
Muhammad Bello, FCT minister, who disclosed this on Sunday while addressing managing director of the Ahmadu Bello University Consultancy Services, Suleiman Karwai in Abuja, said the initiative, was part of machineries put in place to forestall the incessant building collapse.
Bello also revealed that the FCT Development Control Department would soon embark on post development audit of all completed houses in Abuja to ensure strict adherence to the earlier approved building plans.
The minister said the FCTA would also embark on registration of all Material Testing Laboratories operating in the Federal Capital Territory individually or corporately owned and also step-up surveillance of their facilities for effective control.
The minister said that the establishment of the Laboratory has become necessary to enable the administration regularly and independently monitor all ongoing projects across the territory to avoid any mishap during and after construction of public and private projects.
He restated that the Laboratory would give the government a second means of independent check on material use for houses under construction either privately or publicly owned, as well as other infrastructural development like bridges and culverts by ensuring quality control.
According to Bello, building collapses can be avoided with strong institutional supervision of projects either publicly or privately owned.
He remarked that the fact that Abuja has never in history experienced collapse of any public building or public infrastructure shows that the FCT Administration that has since been handling such projects has maintained strict supervision with the highest quality standard.
He said although the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) solely supervised the recent collapsed building in Gwarinpa II District of Abuja, the FCTA would use that unfortunate incident to correct so many flaws in the industry.
“I’m sure you know that that building in Gwarimpa was not supervised by any of our agencies. It was basically handled by the FHA under very lose corporate governance issues because I saw their preliminary report and as you all know, that builder was directed to stop work in March this year. Unfortunately, they continued and because of the weakness in the system nobody stopped him.
“The Gwarinpa building collapse though developed by a private person and wholly supervised by the Federal Housing Authority, it is an indictment of the entire system,” he said.
Speaking earlier, Suleiman Karwai, managing director, Ahmadu Bello Consultancy Services, said the delegation was in Abuja to strengthen the existing cordial relationship between the University and the FCTA.
He promised to continue to partner with the FCTA in the areas of training, exchange expertise in civil engineering and other infrastructural development know how.
