Turkish Contractors Association (TMB) issued a statement on March 1-7 Earthquake Week. Pointing out that more than 45 thousand of our citizens lost their lives in Kahramanmaraş-based earthquakes and concerns persist due to ongoing earthquakes, TMB President M. Erdal Eren added: “Earthquakes bring destruction and pain to our country. As far as we can see, the process of urban transformation must be completed urgently, as we have mentioned at every turn, with a focus on disaster.”
Eren stated: “As a nation, we are experiencing the pain of Kahramanmaraş-centered earthquakes occurred on February 6, directly affecting approximately 14 million citizens in 11 provinces and causing the death of more than 45 thousand citizens. We wish Allah’s mercy on the citizens we lost and wish all our country well and hope that similar disasters do not happen again.
With ongoing disasters, the earthquake reality of our country often manifests itself again. We must now face the fact that, as we always say, humans are killed by neglect and imperfect structures, not because of earthquakes. In the ‘Construction Industry Declaration,’ which we declared in 2014 under 10 articles as the constitution of our sector, we had pointed to problems regarding building security and proposals for solutions. Nature reminds us of the importance of ‘the correct planning, the right project, competent contracting and strict supervision’ in the construction of our country since then. Across the construction industry, we have great weaknesses in areas such as education, supervision and responsibility. In recent earthquakes, we have deeply suffered from such weaknesses. There are more than 400 thousand contractors in our country and some of them have never received any kind of training, let alone technical training. First of all, the ‘Regulation on Classification and Recording of Building Contractors’, which was issued in 2019 for the classification of building contractors according to their economic, financial, professional and technical competencies, should be implemented throughout the country effectively and without compromise. The supervision system mechanisms should also be strengthened in the sector. By accepting the fact that responsibility is multilateral in the process, we should remove zoning amnesty-like practices from our agenda altogether, but rather ensure that the sanctions act as a deterrent.
Unfortunately, our country has a huge stockpile of structures made with specifications before the 1999 Marmara earthquake. Accelerating urban transformation steps with a ‘disaster-driven’ approach is of paramount importance. There is a need for the transformation to be carried out with the support of the state by evacuating the unsafe structures quickly without being left to the initiative of the citizens. In an environment where the odds of a Marmara earthquake are increasing day by day and risks persist in other parts of us, there is no time to waste to prepare for an earthquake.
As TMB, together with the other umbrella organizations of the construction industry, I would like to remind the public and interested parties once again about the ‘Competent Building Contractor, Strong Building Supervision, Competent Engineering System, Workforce with Professional Qualification Certificate, Quality Materials, Versatile Zoning Legislation and Conscious Public Opinion’ titles that we consider necessary for the solution after the earthquake of 2020 on the occasion of the Earthquake Week.
