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THE partial collapse of an old building in Harare’s Bank Street recently, with the falling rubble killing one pedestrian and injuring others, shows the need for proper maintenance on all properties, new and old, and the enforcement of safety and other codes by Harare City Council.

The council, through that large group of skilled staff that receive far too little backing from their elected bosses, does in fact have more than 500 active abatement orders, that is formal orders to property owners to fix a defect that is dangerous, potentially dangerous, a health hazard or even just a public nuisance such as excessive noise.

But with the number of active orders out there, it is obvious the council is not taking the enforcement steps, and just sits back when it tells a property owner to fix their building, but does nothing when the owner does nothing.

These orders can be for defective buildings usually arising from poor maintenance. Old buildings, even those built with hand-moulded bricks and using lime mortars, need not be dangerous, and here the Government itself has set excellent examples with its growing portfolio of buildings more than a century old.

The Constitutional Court sits in an old bank building constructed 120 years ago. The President’s offices are in the older east wing of Munhumatapa Building, a wing built around the same time. Between the two are the even older “Stables”. The Government, however does look after its property properly with regular maintenance and that it why its buildings last forever.

Some private property owners show similar care, and some are even proud of maintaining the architectural heritage of Harare city. This is important as a growing number of buildings pass their 100th anniversary in the city centre, especially the southern parts, and now in the oldest suburbs such as Avondale and Newlands.

When even very new buildings can suffer damage that leads to crumbling masonry, owners of older buildings have to follow proper maintenance and not just hope for the best while they collect their rents or do their business.

There are other dangers that need abatement orders besides crumbling or ill-maintained buildings. Fire is always a risk and there are, as a consequence, quite strict rules that are often breached. All business premises, for example, are required to have escape routes, emergency doors and in any building with more than one-storey, a fire escape, that is at least one extra staircase.

Since no one wants thieves or other criminals to climb in through these escape exits, they can be locked, but while there are people in the building not from the outside, and the inside locks must be bolts or something similar that does not need a key so anyone trapped inside can get out quickly without waiting for the person with the keys.

Many property owners in the city centre and parts of some suburbs have shown commendable innovation when converting premises to new uses so that they are still useful. This has seen sub-divisions and conversion to flea-markets where each trader has a small length of counter. Many have been done properly and are run properly, but some miss the essentials. So we have inadequate aisles and other problems.

There are also new places of assembly in converted business premises, usually for new congregations for some new religious organisation, or conversion to a school or something similar. Again this is commendable, but there are additional requirements for public gatherings, usually involving extra emergency exits and extra toilets, that are not always in place but need to be.

Then we have the health rules, sanitation usually, and there are a significant number of buildings with non-functional toilets or broken water pipes. These have to be fixed and once again we have the abatement orders issued so this is done.

Harare City Council reports it has more than 500 abatement orders that are active, that is the work required has not been done or the nuisance has not been stopped. That sounds far too many. Until a couple of decades ago when a property owner received an abatement order, there was a deadline, and the owner moved swiftly to fix the problem, since any delay would see the building closed and locked and so out of use.

These days it appears that while the council still has a core of qualified inspection staff who can see what is wrong and get the abatement order issued, the city council itself is not following up. So if the property owner does nothing, or decides to put off the required work, no one really cares.

It is all very well identifying the problems, and we would like to see reporting centres where those who have to work in unsafe premises can blow the whistle, but if nothing serious is done to enforce the wide range of safety rules and regulations then the abatement orders are just a piece of waste paper.

Harare City Council has a reputation for not enforcing rules. Many of the land baron problems would not have exploded into the sort of mess that the central Government is now sorting out if the council had simply enforced its planning rules so developers would do what the law demands.

The present growing number of unsafe premises is another time bomb. Already there is pressure for some action, as a young woman just strolling down the street was killed as bricks and other rubble fell about her. But some of the potential disasters will be much worse unless proper action is taken now.

Do we need a far worse building collapse, or do we need a major fire that kills dozens trapped inside a blazing building, or do we need a new health disaster because of blocked toilets and blocked drains. The longer we leave it, the worse the risks become and the more certain that suddenly we will have this dreadful disaster.

Yet the law is on the council’s side. But if the law is not enforced it is just a dead letter, and that can lead to dead people.