Alexandria boy dies on street after balcony collapses

CAIRO: A child died while playing in the street after a balcony collapsed on him in Alexandria Sunday, Youm7 reported.
The balcony of the second floor fell on Karim Mohamed, 10, the latest in a series of building collapses reported in the past months, leaving many killed under the debris.
The frequent pace of such incidents raised concerns on government’s building regulations as many showed construction violations.
On Wednesday, a four-storey building in Cairo’s Sharabiya district was evacuated before its collapse. Ten families who lived in the building will each receive an apartment and compensation worth 5,000 EGP ($639).
On Tuesday, a building in the Delta’s Sharqia governorate collapsed, killing at least nine people. An engineer and a driver of a driller have been detained in relation to the incident, as they had been carrying out construction works on a building adjacent to the six-storey block.
According to a survey conducted in 2014 by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR,) the “rampant violations” of building laws, lack of government oversight, corruption, poor maintenance and failing to follow global construction standards are among the reasons behind the recurrent building collapse phenomenon in Egypt.
Between July 2012 and June 2013, 392 residential buildings collapsed, resulting in 192 deaths, according to the EIPR survey.