The dead bodies of five people were found Tuesday, July 11, 2023 under the rubble of two buildings under construction that collapsed the day before in a southern commune the Guinean capital Conakry, announced the government.
The two buildings collapsed “in the commune of Matoto in Conakry on Monday, July 10, 2023 around 5:00 pm”, said the government spokesman in a statement, stating that “five bodies” were cleared.
Earlier, a first assessment made by a municipal official and a worker present at the scene mentioned “five workers and (one) child under the rubble”, that is, six people wanted.
The Ministry of Justice ordered judicial inquiries, according to the government, which added that the tragedy occurred “on the site of a private developer” who was building social housing.
“It is therefore not the social housing constructions of the State (…) that are concerned by the accident,” explained the government.
The building that collapsed first “was part of a social housing project launched by the Guinean government to house public sector workers,” a local official said earlier.
“The workers had already finished the fifth slab and were starting the construction of the sixth slab when everything collapsed,” said a worker working on the site.
The first collapsed building, which was adjacent to the second, was in a quiet area of the Matoto commune, among other residential and office buildings, according to an AFP correspondent.
An impressive security system made up of police and gendarmes was deployed on the site, where civil protection officers and first responders were working to try to find any survivors under the rubble.
The construction work was carried out by the company MAK BTP, in charge of the construction of social housing in this suburb of Conakry.
Multiple construction companies have been created in recent years in Guinea by relatives of senior officials in the public administration. Every year, buildings under construction collapse in Conakry.
The sector suffers in particular from a lack of control of the works by the services of the Ministry of Urban Planning and Habitat, suspected of corruption by some owners of sites.
