CRJE refutes reports of involvement on demolition contract deal

A renowned Chinese construction company based in Dar es salaam, CRJE (Eat Africa) Ltd a subsidiary company of the China Railway Group Ltd, has refuted reports of having involved in a contract deal alleged to have entered with the government of pulling down the 16 storey building that stands along Indira Gandhi Street in Dar es Salaam. Elaborating the matter the firm’s Managing Director Hu Bo said in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday this week that, his company has never signed a contract deal to pull down the defective building which was commissioned by the government two months ago. He told this blog in an exclusive interview that, his company had only taken hand in rescuing survivors who got stacked in a heap of debris of a building that stood opposite the present one after it had collapsed in March 2013 and killed 36 people on the spot. His clarification has come about just one week after this paper carried out a story attributed  by the Ilala Municipal Director that, the firm had pulled out of the contract and that the municipal council is currently looking for another strategic investor to do the job. He clarified that his company came for help and did the job voluntarily in favour of the government following the existing cordial relations which has long been maintained between Tanzania and China. A tragic incident occurred two days after a Chinese President Xi-Jinping had ended his State visit of the country and left for South Africa. He further noted that, when the information about the collapse of a building reached President jinping while in South Africa, he called on the Chinese Ambassador in the country Dr. Lu-Yuqing and ordered him to ensure that the CRJE company should give hand of help to rescue survivors. On receiving such a message from the Ambassador, he immediately sent a team of taskforce  with equipment like excavators and dumping trucks who worked tirelessly in collaboration with the group of Tanzania People’s Defense Forces (TPDF) who already had reported on the site for three days consecutively. “After the completion of the work President Jakaya Kikwete issued a certificate of appreciation to my company for the well done job”, he said while insisting that is how they had participated in the rescue operation and not in any way otherwise. The current building together with the collapsed one both are owned by a Dar es Salaam based business man Raza Huseein Damji with the National Housing Corporation (NHC) having a 25 percent share in the project and were both constructed by Lucky Construction Limited. Sou Consult Limited did the work of structural engineering while NHA Limited was cited as the architects. The government through the ministry of Lands, Housing and Human Settlements Development ordered the building be pulled down at a cost of Sh. 1 billion after building experts discovered that it had developed some internal cracks. The government had discovered that, the two buildings with different construction permits had violated the laid down contractual rules and regulations as stipulated in their contracts whereby the owner erected a 16-storey structure instead of 10 floors as stipulated in the building permits which had been issued by Ilala Municipal Council authorities in Dar es Salaam region.  The mistake was discovered when the former building collapsed and during the investigations that lasted for a couple of one month later, building experts had discovered that the present building had been constructed at fault and recommended immediate demolition to prevent further losses.