Chantelle Benjamin

Johannesburg Metro Editor

BETWEEN 60% and 70% of Johannesburg buildings inspected by emergency management services do not comply with required fire safety regulations.

This was revealed in a public safety portfolio committee meeting and was confirmed yesterday by the city’s emergency management services.

Concerns about a lack of fire safety in inner-city buildings led last November to the start of Operation Token Days, which was aimed at enforcing city by-laws.

The operation saw the closure of a number of buildings and illegal inner-city creches.

Johannesburg’s emergency services spokesman, Malcolm Midgely, said many of the owners of buildings were more concerned about making money than abiding by regulations.

"We can enforce the law to a point by insisting that owners submit plans to emergency services for approval when they first take over a building, but they do not bother to notify us when they convert the building from business use to residential use."

There was an outcry in February after 15 children from Help Us Daycare creche were left on the pavement while police arranged for them to be sent home.

The spokesman said the failure to convert buildings properly when their use was changed was often only discovered when a fire broke out.

"A business moves out of the inner city to upmarket Sandton, where they rent or buy their own building, leaving the building they were renting in the inner city empty.

The owner, faced with a massive building now standing vacant, begins renting it out as accommodation without making any of the necessary changes."

With only eight inspectors for the City of Johannesburg, emergency management services is understaffed, said Democratic Alliance (DA) spokesman for emergency services Darren Bergman.

"They are understaffed and they just do not have a capacity to inspect every building or to do follow-ups," he said.

The city recently budgeted for an additional 15 inspectors to address the problem.

"As a volunteer paramedic I have gone into buildings in Hillbrow where the lifts are not working and the doors to the fire escape are locked.

"If a fire broke out in some of those buildings there would be chaos. The only option for many people would be to jump out of the windows," he said.

The DA this week conducted an investigation into two Doornfontein buildings, both of which were found not to have complied with safety requirements.

One building, on the corner of Rockey and Davies streets, had businesses on the lower five floors and about 30 residents living on the top two floors.

It was missing fire extinguishers and various other safety requirements were missing.