Senior government officials, engineers and other stakeholders Sunday called for retrofitting of vulnerable buildings and quality construction of concrete structures for safer cities in earthquake-prone Bangladesh.
They also underlined the need to follow Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) to make all establishments earthquake resistant and to protect people from the threat of dying under collapsed buildings.
The call was made at a seminar on "Retrofitting of Vulnerable Buildings and Quality Construction of Buildings for Safer Cities" at a city hotel. Housing and Public Works Minister Secretary Golam Rabbani presided over the function.
The project for Capacity Development on Natural Disaster Resistant Techniques of Construction and Retrofitting for Public Buildings (CNCRP) in cooperation with Public Works Department (PWD) with the technical support of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) organised the daylong discussion.
During the seminar marking the completion of the third year of the four-year-long project, engineers shared learning and experiences on preparing inventory list of 3,000 public buildings, practicing various seismic assessment methods, and improving building construction quality.
The PWD officials said as concern grows over possible earthquake in Dhaka or other major cities in Bangladesh as well as after Rana Plaza incident, the government took strong initiative to strengthen safe working environment.
Speaking as chief guest, Housing and Public Works Minister Engineer Mosharraf Hossain said the issue of structural safety came as a matter of serious concern to all quarters after the tragic incident of Rana Plaza.
He said many buildings in the capital and elsewhere of the country built earlier are faulty and even now-a-days many builders, after receiving approval from Rajuk, go for construction flouting the BNBC.
"That reluctance of builders to comply with the BNBC puts lives of people staying in those buildings at risk," he said after hailing the Japanese government for their financial and technical supports in respect to the structural safety.
Disaster Management and Relief Minister Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhury Maya said Japan is one of the most quake-prone nations of the world.
"We can reduce the extent of losses caused by the natural disasters by using the experience of Japanese engineers through this initiative," he said.
Japanese Ambassador Shiro Sadoshima said the networking with Japanese engineers will help reinforce local engineers in constructing tremor-resistant establishments.
He said JICA has signed a Tk 10 million MoU with Bangladesh Bank, BGMEA, BKMEA and PWD.
Under the agreement, he said the PWD conducted preliminary seismic assessment and will conduct in-depth assessment and start retrofitting works of RMG factories based on the BNBC.
JICA Bangladesh Chief Representative Mikio Hataeda said with this technology transfer and capacity development, the number of disaster resistant buildings will increase in Bangladesh gradually.
"I would like to stress that BNBC is the only standard of Bangladesh for construction of buildings. Therefore complying with BNBC should be compulsory in Bangladesh and all stakeholders should follow the BNBC to ensure building safety," he added.
The CNCPR project is a technical transfer project from Japan (2011-2014), covering public buildings of Dhaka, Chittagong, and Sylhet of Public Works Department (PWD) to develop the capacity of the engineers to promote seismic-resistant reinforced concrete (RC) buildings.
The project is conducted in five fields; 1) Building inventory compilation and vulnerability assessment, 2) Retrofitting design, 3) Construction management, 4) Quality control and 5) Dissemination and awareness raising.
