Tongaat mall foreman blames poor building practice

Tongaat Mall construction site foreman, Ronnie Pillay, blames the small columns and blatant dismissal of the court order to stop building, for the disaster.

Taking the witness stand for five hours yesterday, during the commission of inquiry that is taking place in Tongaat, Pillay was cross examined on his appointment as a site foreman for such a huge project. He admitted that he did not meet all the requirements as per the Construction Regulation Act. Pillay has had no formal training or qualifications and the mall was his second project as site manager.

“I believe my 14 years of experience makes me qualified to do the job. I can read 90% of the plans done by engineers or architects but I can not tell whether the drawings are wrong or right so I seek for help with that,” said Pillay.

The inquiry’s chair Phumudzo Maphaha said Pillay must go and think about whether it was not the missing 10% that might have to lead mall’s collapse on November 19.

Pillay said that in September he raised his concerns to his boss and owner of Gralio Precast, Jay Singh, about the size of the columns as he felt that the slabs were too heavy for the small columns they were building.

“Singh told me that he had consulted with the engineer, Andre Ballack, and everything was fine. Two weeks before the disaster one of the concrete slabs sagged for about 70 mm and I reported the matter to Singh and was told Ballack would create two beams to support the area,” said Pillay.

The sagging slab was a few metres from where another slab below it gave in injuring 29 construction workers and killing two on November 19 last year.

Pillay said he was not aware that the building plans had not been passed by the Ethekwini Municipality and was kept in the dark by Singh about the final court order to stop all work on the site.

“I was aware of the interim court order issued in September 26 and we stopped working for three days, after which we were instructed to come back to work. I did not know about the final interdict, which was issued on November 14. Maybe if we had respected it we could have avoided the collapse,” said Pillay.

Pillay denied any involvement in the steelworks and said Gralio had subcontracted Mbuyisa Steel Fixing to handle all steel work on the site.

Ballack’s lawyer Richard Hoal questioned brickworks supervisor, Prashalen Gounden, on the quality of cement they were using. He said he had test results that showed that some of the concrete on the site was not of adequate strength which could have compromised the quality of both slabs and columns.

Gounden said they were using Lucky Cement made from Parkistan.

A representative from Mbuyisa and safety consultant Ishmail van Zyl are expected to testify this afternoon.