Police Minister Bheki Cele said the property developer, contractor, and sub-contractors haven’t been forthcoming with information to assist with the investigations, regarding the collapsed building in George, in the Western Cape, hasn’t been cooperative with the authorities.
According to the Minister, they haven’t provided the police nor emergency services about the number of people who were on site, when the building collapsed last week Monday.
Cele was addressing the media near the collapsed construction site on Sunday.
“The developer has been identified, a contractor has been identified, together with the other six sub-contractors, those are the people that must help us.
“Who are those people that they employed and sent them to this side. We’re working them in terms of this information, but if the information is not forthcoming, the police are instructed to uphold and enforce the law, in terms of them providing documents. They’re not cooperative,” said Cele.
The Minister highlighted that they’re investigations have established that nobody knows how many people were at the construction site.
“The only numbers we know is of the people in hospital, the deceased, and rescued. Rather than that, we don’t know, it’s just speculation,” added Cele.
He also expressed disappointment that the contractor or sub-contractors haven’t addressed family members or relatives of the workers.
Cele also met with families and relatives of the workers at the City Hall, and said he felt their pain and sorrow.
Some of the relatives also expressed disappointment about the lack of update regarding the search and rescue operations.
“It’s enough, we need to know what is happening. Allow us to go there inside so that we can see the progress. We no longer know what is happening. Tomorrow (Monday) will be the second week since this disaster,” said one of the distraught family members.
At 19:00 on Sunday, emergency services announced that the death toll had risen to 20, 14 hospitalised, 48 rescued while 32 remain unaccounted for.
