By Ebi Kesiena
A six-storey building under construction in a suburb of the Guinean capital Conakry has collapsed, leaving six people including a child missing on Tuesday.
According to local sources, the building collapsed late Monday.
Giving eye witness account, local official and a worker present at the scene noted that five workers and a child were under the rubble.
Also, an AFP correspondent who visited the site noted that the building was located in a quiet district of Matoto (south of Conakry), between other residential and office buildings.
An impressive security force of police and gendarmes was deployed at the scene, where civil protection workers and rescue workers were working to try to find any survivors under the rubble.
“The workers had already finished the fifth slab and were starting to build the sixth when everything collapsed. For the moment, none of the people buried are responding to the calls of the rescuers. But we’re still hoping for a miracle by rescuing some of the workers trapped under the rubble”, said a worker on the site.
The building was part of a social housing project launched by the Guinean government to house public sector workers.
The construction work was being carried out by MAK BTP, the company responsible for building social housing in this suburb of Conakry.
Numerous construction and public works companies have been set up in Guinea in recent years by relatives of senior government officials, as every year buildings under construction collapse in Conakry.
The sector suffers in particular from a lack of supervision of the work by the services of the Ministry of Urban Planning and Housing, which is accused of corruption by some site owners.
