Experts clear ‘Kabuga Building’ for renovation

Government is now reassured it will not lose millions of francs injected earlier in renovation works on Kabuga Building, located in Muhima along the Nyabugogo road. The building is set to be the new Police Headquarters. This comes after a Kenyan structural and civil engineering firm – Ngasi Consulting Engineers, recently declared the building fit for renovation after a one-month structural audit of the building. As a precaution, the Kenyan firm was contracted in September to make a structural analysis on the building. Early last year, the government spent roughly Rwf 800m on works and materials to renovate the building without a prior structural analysis to determine the complex’s structural integrity, which is usually the rule before renovation works can begin. Infrastructure Minister Linda Bihire first told The New Times about the plan to rectify things, and carry out a structural audit before renovation work continues and the Minister now says the building is out of harm’s way. “Yes, the building is safe and sound and it’s due now for renovation for public use. The details of the structural audit are with the national police,” Infrastructure Minister Linda Bihire revealed in an e-mail Tuesday. Back in September, Bihire had stressed that: “To invest more money in it, we first needed to know its structural integrity”. Mary Gahonzire, the then Acting Commissioner General of Police, (now prisons chief) had confessed that previously when renovation works were underway, they discovered that the five-storied building may be old beyond repair. “We received information that the building was cracking – we would have been creating a disaster by going ahead with the renovations (before a structural analysis)”. The building in question used to belong to Felicien Kabuga, a 1994 Genocide fugitive alleged to have been the main financer of the Genocide. Some of the earlier purchased renovation materials – tones of cement and paint, are stored at the police headquarters. Ends

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Experts clear ‘Kabuga Building’ for renovation