The company behind the collapsed Joburg building that killed nine people on Monday was not registered with the national construction regulatory body, and municipal officials cannot find its owners.
The National Home Builders Registration Council (NHBRC), which regulates the building industry, said registration details of New World Order Investments 90 Ltd Pty do not appear on its system.
Parts of the building collapsed on Monday afternoon killing nine workers and injuring others.
On Tuesday, Sunday Times’ sister publication, Sowetan, supplied the regulator with the name of the company and its registration number as it appears on the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) database.
“Nothing comes out of our system from the name you have given us,” said NHBRC spokesperson Portia Sebulela, before asking Sowetan to supply her with the company’s registration number to help filter her search.
“Please note New World Order Investment 90 Pty Ltd registration number 2007/022322/07 is not registered with the NHBRC,” she said in her second response.
Any person who is involved in the business of building homes is required by law to register with the NHBRC. Failure to do so constitutes a criminal offence.
The regulator’s website carries a warning for consumers: “The NHBRC certifies builders who meet the prescribed industry standards criteria in terms of technical competence, construction experience and financial capability.
“The Housing Consumers Protection Act also requires all new homes to be enrolled with the NHBRC at least 15 days prior to construction. Enrolling your home building project with the NHBRC protects you against poor building practices. Our building quality inspectors will inspect the construction of your home to ensure that it is not exposed to structural failure.”
However, as of Tuesday afternoon, there was no evidence that the company had submitted building plans before it began building.
On Tuesday, Joburg municipality officials, including mayor Dada Morero, visited the site.
“We should have probably picked up that these people are building where they should not build. On inspection, our teams from EMS have confirmed, together with development planning, that there were no plans submitted for this structure,” said Morero.
“We are also still battling to trace and track the owners, but we do know that the building belongs to a company. We are now still trying to trace them. We know that the developers or the constructors were still on site even yesterday. However, they have since switched off their phones and they have not come around today,” he added.
Sowetan visited the address of the company in Ormonde. An employee said the owner lives overseas.
Sowetan understands that New World Order is owned by Tesmin Ghood, 71, and believes it is a company she started in 2007. The company has no internet footprint.
Ghood is also the director of three other property investment companies that operate in Gauteng.
The way it appears shows that the collapse was likely to happen at some point, even if it had not happened yesterday [Monday]. Based on our experience in handling incidents of this nature, we are able to see that it was unlikely to survive much longer.
— Freddy Morukhu, Johannesburg EMS divisional chief
Freddy Morukhu, Johannesburg divisional chief for Emergency Management Services (EMS), who was part of the team of rescuers first to arrive at the scene on Monday, said that, based on his experience, the building was bound to collapse.
“The way it appears shows that the collapse was likely to happen at some point, even if it had not happened yesterday [Monday]. Based on our experience in handling incidents of this nature, we are able to see that it was unlikely to survive much longer,” Morukhu said.
He said the structure was still moving and unstable when they arrived. They had to cut through the slabs which had trapped some workers. The slabs were so thick it took them a long time to get through them.
“The stabilising equipment was sometimes not sitting properly because of the condition of the area, with lots of debris and material. Everything was just hanging all over. But with the technical expertise within my team, we managed to stabilise the concrete. The concrete was all over, the steel was all over — everything was just a risky situation. We tried to stabilise the situation and the structure before we walked in," he said.
Their operation started at 2.30pm and lasted until 11pm. The last body was recovered at 11.20am on Tuesday.
“When we arrived, we thought no-one could survive, but we heard people screaming … we found that there were bodies lying visible. Two bodies were visible from outside, and then we mobilised more teams to come and continue the rescue. The first we took out from the rubble took us about 20 minutes," Morukhu added.
City manager Floyd Brink said there was a shortage of building inspectors. There are 132 inspectors and only 59 of them were building control inspectors.
Sowetan
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