Part of the rubble/ Photo by Reacheal Wambuzi.
A two-floor building still under construction at the Jinja city-based Speke courts hotel collapsed on Monday night. Eyewitnesses say that the building collapsed at around 7:00 PM while casual laborers were finalizing their day’s duty.
Edward Musisi, a resident in the neighborhood says that they saw the building collapse but they couldn’t do much because of the narrow access through the hotel’s accommodation area to the accident scene.
An administrator at the hotel told our reporter on condition of anonymity for fear of reprimand by her superiors said that there were six casual laborers on-site at the time of the accident.
She said that one of them was severely injured and is currently admitted at an undisclosed private health facility, three reportedly fled, but the whereabouts of the other two are yet to be ascertained.
She said that the hotel’s top managers led by the directors will address the media about the incident later. Police were yet to excavate the accident scene to ascertain whether some people were still trapped under the rubble of the building.
Morris Niyonzima, the Officer In charge of Jinja Central Police Station, said they had started recording statements from the hotel managers about the incident. He said detectives had tasked the hotel managers to account for the casual laborers on site, at the time of the accident.
He also said they had cordoned off the scene to deter illegal access and possible contamination. Twaha Gishebi, the Budondo ward councilor, who doubles as the Jinja City Finance Secretary, suspects that the accident resulted from the use of poor-quality materials.
-URN
