Fear over inferior bricks in Tanzania

President Jakaya Kikwete inspects hydroform bricks made by a youth group. Experts have been urging builders to use them because they are durable and can be produced at a low cost.  PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • The majority of people seeking to build houses would simply turn contractors in their own right and set their own standards
  • CONSTRUCTION: Roughly only 30 per cent met standard requirements, says TBS official Johanes Maganga

When one thinks of building own home,  the quality of materials and the cost of putting up that structure are things that come first in mind. ‘Where shall I buy high-quality bricks or iron bars’ is probably the first thing one considers.

However, it is unfortunate that in Tanzania today that the culture of going for high-quality building materials is dead.

The majority of people seeking to build houses would simply turn contractors in their own right and set their own standards.

Mushrooming commercial brickyards in Dar es Salaam and other major cities are testimony of how regulations in making building materials are grossly violated.

The Citizen on Saturday has established after a month-long survey that over 90 per cent of brick makers in the city are not only unlicensed but have not undergone any training as to the quality and specifications of the bricks.

This state of affairs has left this crucial and sensitive business for the country’s safety and the economy at large in the hands of even crooked traders.

Construction experts who talked to this paper all concurred that the brick-making industry was in a crisis and leaving it unsupervised was similar to creating an impending tragedy for homeowners and the economy. Already many are forced to spend more money that they could have otherwise injected in other projects for maintaining the houses because they used knowingly or unwittingly poor quality bricks. 

On the high risk of tragedies caused by the use of substandard bricks are the low-income earners who cannot afford buying high-quality bricks made in a few brickyards.

“The problem is more serious than you estimate,” says Engineers Registration Board registrar Steven Mlote. “The problem is not only about bricks but even iron bars. Building material shops are full of fake and substandard materials. This is all over the country.”

Players in the industry are blaming the situation on the lack of an effective institution to regulate the business. No one is aware of what is going on in brick yards, they say.

The consequence of failure to regulate brick-making business, according to Mr Mlote, is that the country will have weak infrastructure at high price. “Those substandard bricks sometimes are sold at a price similar to the high-quality ones.”

He adds: “It disrupts the economy at individual level and national level. Substandard bricks and blocks are used to construction public drainage system or public schools. They collapse within no time and force authorities to spend more public money in situations that can be avoided.”

The Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS) says: “Few brickyards can meet the standards.”

The agency had in 2010 carried out a standard check at many brickyards in Kinondoni and parts of Ilala District only to find a shocking situation.

“We did inspection and established that most bricks were below standard. Roughly only 30 per cent met standard requirements,” says Mr Johanes Maganga, acting head of Building and Construction Section at TBS.

In 2002 TBS released a specification for concrete bricks and blocks that specify requirements for pre-case hollow and solid masonry units for use in walling.

However, none of  15 brickyards visited by this paper are aware that the specification manual exists. A bag of cement and 20 heads pans of sand are normally used to make about 30 standard bricks but some senseless bricklayers use the same amount to make up to 70 bricks.

A man at a brickyard in Dar es Salaam’s Goba suburb, Mr  Mohamed Mwalami, says he uses a 50kg bag of cement to make up to 65 bricks. “I have been in this business for past 15 years. We don’t have any standards here,” he said.

A similar response greeted our reporter when he visited other points in the city.

But Mr Maganga says a massive research was underway in in three municipalities in Dar es Salaam on the quality of bricks as a way of addressing the problem.

The National Housing & Building Research Agency’s acting director general, Dr Simeon Kintingu, says the problem was serious and something must be done to change things around.

“The problem is bigger than you see. Municipalities which normally license people to do the business do not have trained inspectors to do the job,” he says.

Dr Kintingu whose agency is charged among other things, to promote affordable and durable local building materials and appropriate housing construction techniques, says: “We need to start with licensing and quality control authorities if we are to change things around.”

He says the use of substandard bricks can have adverse repercussions to the household economy and the country at large. “Using below-standard bricks means houses will not live longer…so you will have to do a lot of repairs. Economically, the work force, money and time you employ for the repairs is similar to moving backwards,” he says.