Any individual, group our organisation that is found to be responsible for the collapse of infrastructure in the works and housing sectors will henceforth face stipulated sanctions, the Council for the Regulation of Engineering in Nigeria declared on Monday. COREN said the council was perfecting its new Act for strict implementation and that the law empowered the regulator to sanction anyone or organisation, whether in the engineering field or not, found culpable in the collapse of any building, road or bridge.
The President, COREN, Mr Ali Rabiu, who disclosed this at the council’s headquarters in Abuja during a press briefing on the occasion of the 28th COREN Engineering Assembly scheduled to hold later in the month, assured Nigerians that very soon all forms of infrastructure collapse would belong to the past. He said, “Our new law has enabled us to sanction and punish any citizen that is found culpable in either building collapse, road collapse or any related infrastructure collapse.
“We are perfecting this law and very soon, we will go to town with its implementation. So those involved in construction are hereby cautioned to do what is right.” In March this year, President Muhammadu Buhari signed the Engineers Amendment Act, 2019 and the law was to basically empower and broaden the powers of COREN to prosecute infractions in the construction sector.
It was gathered that with the law, COREN now has powers to prosecute any person or firm that contravenes the provisions of the Act in a court of competent jurisdiction. Rabiu noted that COREN’s previous Act streamlined the council to only have powers to sanction, punish or prosecute engineers.
He said that the council had established that the collapse of many infrastructure across the country were not caused by engineers but by people without the required skills. Rabiu said with the new law, many regulations were being established and introduced by COREN and these would guide both the federal and state governments on how they go about project construction. PUNCH
Pix: Collapsed building
