The City Council of Nairobi does not have the capacity to oversee the ongoing rapid development in the city, it has been revealed. A meeting organised by the Architectural Association of Kenya heard on Friday that City Hall has 20 building inspectors only, covering the more than 680 square kilometres.

Acting director of city planning Tom Odongo said it was impossible to serve the whole city efficiently with that number of inspectors. “The technical capacity of the council needs to be improved,” he said.

The situation is no different at Kisii Municipal Council, which does not have a qualified architect or engineer and has only one physical planner.

“The council has no capacity to approve or supervise developments to acceptable standards,” said Steven Oundo, the head of the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK).

He said local councils need to be stricter in the enforcement of the building code to prevent tragedies resulting from the collapse of buildings under construction.

He said an audit of buildings to assess their structure and safety was needed to determine those that are safe. Mr Oundo said although there was a shortage of architects in Kenya, their services were also perceived as expensive. Architects charge between 10 and 15 per cent of the cost of the project.

Mr Oundo spoke at a media breakfast in Nairobi where the association released preliminary findings on the collapse of buildings under construction in Mombasa and Kisii.

In Kisii, one person was killed and more than 10 injured when a three-storey building under construction collapsed on June 6 while in Mombasa, more than 10 workers were trapped in the collapse building in April. In both cases, said AAK, “there were serious violations of regulations governing the practice of building and construction by various players in the industry.’