Engineers and experts at a workshop in the city on Sunday underlined the need for following the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) strictly to make all establishments earthquake resistant.
The workshop titled “Retrofitting of vulnerable buildings and quality construction of buildings for safer cities” was organised by Public Works Department (PWD) with the technical support of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) at a city hotel, says a press release.
The function was held under “The project for Capacity Development on Natural Disaster Resistant Techniques of Construction and Retrofitting for Public Buildings (CNCRP).”Engineers shared their learning and experiences on preparing inventory list of 3,000 public buildings, practicing various seismic assessment methods, and improving building construction quality.
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.
As like the RMG sectors all the other buildings also need to be ensured to make Bangladesh resilient to disasters, they added.
Minister for Public Works Engineer Mosharraf Hossain inaugurated the daylong workshop as the chief guest while Minister for Disaster Management Mofazzal Hossain Chowdhary Maya, Birbikram spoke as the special guest. Housing and Public Works Secretary M Golam Rabbani, Japan Ambassador to Bangladesh Shiro Sadoshima and JICA Chief Representative here Mikio Hataeda also spoke on occasion.
“The BNBC is the only standard of Bangladesh for construction of the building. Therefore complying BNBC should be a mainstream in Bangladesh and all stakeholders should follow the BNBC to ensure building safety.” said Mr. Hataeda.
The CNCPR project is a technical transfer project from Japan (2011-2014), covering public buildings of Dhaka, Chittagong, and Sylhet of PWD to develop capacity of the engineers to promote seismic-resistant RC buildings.
The project is being implemented in five sectors including building inventory compilation & vulnerability assessment, retrofitting design, construction management, quality control and dissemination and creating awareness.
Earlier, JICA has signed a Taka one crore worth MOU among Bangladesh Bank, BGMEA, BKMEA and PWD. Under the agreement, the officials said the PWD has conducted preliminary seismic assessment and will conduct in-depth assessment and start the retrofitting works for RMG factories based on the BNBC.
The workshop showed Japan’s continuous commitments to support Bangladesh with such initiatives. With this technology transfer and capacity development, numbers of disaster resistant buildings will be increased in Bangladesh gradually. – Staff Reporter
