Aminul Islam : 65.5% of the garments industry buildings do not follow building codes. Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) reported so by scrutinizing for 2 years (2013-2014) after the Rana Plaza incident at Savar. Nakio Matsumora, the country program coordinator of JICA’s disaster management, told the reporters at JICA’s Dhaka Office on Wednesday.
They have come to this decision, after marking 230 buildings out of 300, as dangerous through proper scrutiny. JICA commented that only 14.6% of the garment’s industry buildings in Bangladesh fulfilled the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC). 50.9% of the buildings are lower than BNBC’s and 34.5% are low quality buildings. JICA mentioned in their report that according to this calculation almost 3000 buildings are in a dangerous condition. They also mentioned in the report that to retrofit all these buildings a total of 1.17 billion dollars needs to be spent.
Nakio Matsumora said that this research is not meant to belittle Bangladesh. To assist in constructing Earthquake-proof buildings and setting up fire safety by following regulatory authority laws is the main objective. Proper training should also be given to architects related to designing buildings. For this reason he mentioned the importance of forming a building regulatory authority.
Translated by – Nasif Chowdhury