DHAKA, February 23, 2014 – Professional Engineers and experts in a workshop here today underlined the need for following the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) strictly to make all establishments earthquake resistant.
The workshop “Retrofitting of Vulnerable Buildings & Quality Construction of Buildings for Safer Cities” was organized by “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) at a city hotel.
Public Works Minister Engineer Mosharraf Hossain inaugurated the daylong workshop as the chief guest while Disaster Mnagement Minister 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.
During the workshop marking the completion of 3rd year of the 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.
JICA has signed a Taka one crore worth MOU among Bangladesh Bank, BGMEA, BKMEA 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. As like the RMG sectors all the other buildings also need to be ensured to make Bangladesh resilient to disasters, they added.
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. “I would like to stress that 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 conducted in 5 fields; 1) Building Inventory compilation & Vulnerability Assessment, 2) Retrofitting Design, 3) Construction management, 4) Quality control, and 5) Dissemination & awareness raising.