City building collapses, kills five, injures five

Kampala. At least five people died and five have been injured when earth near a building foundation collapsed on workers at Kansanga, a Kampala suburb, yesterday at around 3pm.
Police identified the dead as Paul Ochan, Musa Bob, Benard Kabaale, Robert Kakeeto and Collins Serugo.

The injured, Siraje Sifuna, Daniel Oloka and Joseph Katongole, were admitted to Mulago National Referral Hospital.
Kampala Metropolitan Police spokesman, Mr Patrick Onyango, said the incident happened when the workers were excavating earth from the foundation.
“Five died and the bodies have been taken to Mulago hospital for a postmortem. Of the five people injured, two are in critical condition,” Mr he said.

Mr Onyango said they have engaged engineers to establish the cause of the accident and whether anyone can be held responsible.
“By the time our officers reached the scene, the owner (s) of the building and the engineers had taken off.
We are looking for them to give us information on what happened to help us in our investigations,” he said.

Previous incidents
In 2008, seven people died and two were injured when a wall collapsed at the National Social Security Fund building in Kampala. Another building collapsed on Nasser Road killing two people after engineers excavated earth near it. In 2010, two buildings collapsed at Kololo and Bunga in Kampala leaving four people dead. No engineer or owner of the collapsed buildings has ever been convicted or fined by court.

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