New plan to rein in rogue developers

"The architects are regulated by their board, engineers are regulated by their institute, contractors are regulated by the National Construction Authority (NCA), and where is this person called the developer? Yet they are actually killing people.

"We cannot allow that to continue any longer," he said during the launch of the first national healthy homes guidelines jointly developed by the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK) and Habitat for Humanity International in Nairobi on Friday.

"All the buildings now reported to have collapsed have no approval; they had already been inspected and marked unsafe, and reports had already been given to the relevant institutions for action." He added: "It is really an issue of impunity and we have to deal with it."

Kitungu further said the government was in the process of putting together a multi-agency team to ramp up surveillance since more developments across the country are now reported to be happening not only during the day but also at night.

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