The ugly spate of collapsing buildings in the country is attributable to the refusal of many stakeholders to play by the rules.

Incidents of building collapse in the country are still far from coming to an end. Only on Friday, June 10, 2016, at 2 am in the Rue Foe, Omnisports area of Yaounde, another building crumbled. This time, it was a three-storey structure under construction. Neighbours said it developed visible cracks some time ago, but the owner of the property would not be persuaded to stop work.

Instead, he reportedly urged technicians to continue, assuring them that there was indeed nothing to worry about, until the building came tumbling down like a pack of cards. Fortunately, it did not fall to the side of an inhabited residential building and only smashed three vehicles in a nearby overnight car park. The Rue Foe building collapse is only one of the several that come to light in Cameroon; with many others going unreported.

Among the reasons for such incidents are the sheer incompetence, negligence and refusal by building technicians, property developers and local municipal and city council officials to play by the rules. The building that collapsed last Friday in Yaounde was erected in a swampy area, and no one knows if adequate backfilling was done. This might have resulted in the cracks that appeared on the building before, but no one felt concerned enough to end the construction.

In other instances, would-be home owners begin work without building permits. Even when “Stop work” notices are boldly written on such illegal structures, they still go ahead with construction. On the other hand, some building contractors and fraudulent technicians use sub-standard material to “save cost” and pocket the money. The end product of such shoddy jobs is obvious – structural failure.   

In some cases, property developers follow due process in securing building permits, but end up doing something else on the site. However, deviating from thoroughgoing building procedures from conception to construction only ends up being costly – in terms of time, material, money and even human life when there is structural failure. In a country where many people are wont to avoid doing things the right way by bribing their way through, it cannot be expected to be different in building construction.