The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Tema East, Titus Nii Kwatei Glover has stated that Nii Armah Ashietey, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations is one of the best Municipal Chief Executives (MCE) that the country has ever produced.

The minister was the MCE for Tema for eight years, from 1992 – 2000 and he is widely accredited with the massive transformation with the Tema Metropolis at the time.

Titus Glover was contributing to Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana last Friday on the issue of the collapsed building at the NII Boi Town, which claimed one live and injured several others.

The NPP MP who could not understand why the AMA failed to take action after several warnings to the owner of the collapsed building, pointed out that such carless approach to things by the AMA, couldn’t have happened under the watch of Nii Armah Ashietey, who he described as exceptionally competent.

“I worked with Honourable Nii Armah Ashietey… one of the most successful Chief Executives. I say this with no apologies whatsoever. He was up to the task and made sure he did what was right.”

He said the minister, who is also the MP for Klottey Korley Constituency in the Greater Accra Region made sure that all his staff did their job very well adding that he wasted no time in disciplining supervisors and inspectors who failed to their job very well.

According to him, Nii Armah Ashietey as the Tema MCE spent time on the field to inspect structures being put up by developers and gave orders for those structures that flouted the by-laws of the municipality to be pulled down. The NPP MP conceded that, the Employment Minister played a major in the development of the Tema Metropolise. Meanwhile the Vice President of the Ghana Institution of Surveyors, Emmanuel Martey in an interview with Radio Ghana, says falling standards in the building industry and the refusal of developers to employ the services of professionals have been identified as a major cause of the collapse of buildings in recent times.

He has therefore appealed to the public to employ the services of professional bodies such as the Ghana Institution of Surveyors, the Ghana Institution of Engineers and the Building Contractors Association, to ensure that the right building code is adhered to.

He called on the MMDAs to enforce by-laws on building regulations to avoid such disasters. Mr Martey's comment follows the collapse of a six-storey building at Nii Boi Town.

In line with this, a Construction Project and Management Consultant, Kofi Obeng Ayiribi, called for a comprehensive national policy through a legislation to regulate the building industry. He said the country cannot afford to lose lives every day due to negligence.