More than 200 families occupying 40 units of four-storey buildings in Thindigua village, Kiambu town have been ordered to vacate after one of the buildings started sinking.
The rental houses which were built and completed in 2014 have never had any issues until the recent heavy downpour last week when the pillars holding them started to cave in.
"We have never had any issues with our houses but we noticed the supporting beams have moved a bit and started sinking further," a worker said.
Brighton Wekesa an employee of Brand Movers said that they have been evacuating tenants from the building for two days and inside the houses.
"It was necessary for the tenants to vacate for their own safety. You can see cracks in the houses and some are not repairable. People’s lives are important that is why we came in to save them," Wekesa said.
Chelsea Wanjiru, a tenant said that though it is safe for them to vacate it was hard to find a house to move to on quite short notice.
“The abrupt vacation is quite costly and our children's school is near now one has to undergo trouble to look for another house to live in. However it's better safe than sorry,” Wanjiru said.
Salome Muthoni Kiambu, county executive for Lands, Housing, and Physical Planning said that they received a call about a building that was sinking and involved a multi-sectorial team to assess the situation.
"We involved a security team, National Construction Authority (NCA) and the county government team after we received a call that there is a building which is sinking in Thindigua village," Muthoni said.
Muthoni said they discovered that the building started showing signs of sinking about two weeks ago and they had a session with the developer who was cooperative.
"The Kiambu county government has the approvals for the development which has been in existence for the last ten years. There are 40 units with occupants," Muthoni said.
She said they decided that the safety of the tenants should come first that's why they began the immediate eviction.
"We have decided that all the tenants should vacate their houses today to prevent any incidents while our engineers are investigating to find out why the building is sinking," Muthoni said.
She added that they will also inspect old buildings nearby to ensure that all developments and constructions are safe for people.
"We have flagged a number of buildings and since the exercise is done weekly, county engineers give a report of building constructions to ensure that they are compliant," Muthoni said.
"Where need be we have asked tenants to vacate and ensure that the developer and his team do as instructed as our team goes back to check whether what needed to be done was actually done before human habitation resumes."
Muthoni said that it is very important to ensure residents are safe and it's unfortunate when lives are lost and developers lose their investment.
"It is important for a developer to be compliant and do the right things. We in the Kiambu government are committed to ensuring that we make it friendly and easy for a developer to bring in their documents for approval and we walk through the process with you," Muthoni said.
Muthoni, however, said that the physical planning department is working on making approvals seamless and encouraged developers not to take shortcuts when seeking construction approval.