Staff of parliament have been locked out of the Job 600 building after fire gutted offices on the 10th floor of the East Wing on Tuesday.

The office complex has been evacuated as officials of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) assess the extent of damage.

Class91.3FM’s Ekow Annan reports that some of the staff are stranded, having been asked to stay away from the building.

The GNFS has blamed the fire on electrical faults after initial assessment.

Earlier, Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu had played down any suggestions that a structural defect or architectural flaw may have contributed to the inability of firemen to have access to the Job 600 building in time to douse the fire.

According to the Member of Parliament (MP) for Suame, the firemen who first arrived at the venue had a challenge due to the height of the fire tenders which could not enter the forecourt and had to use another point of entry at the back of the building to gain access to douse the fire.

However, Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu said: “This structure has been here since time immemorial, you know. It is a colonial edifice and this tube was there.”

He continued: “Because we have been using buses to this place maybe we did not factor the fact that these new facilities [fire tenders] are high rise vehicles themselves and you cannot really think what vehicle will be manufactured tomorrow or which height the vehicle will have.

“I will not blame it on structural defects. It is an old building which was rehabilitated and repurposed for the use of parliament,” further arguing that the delayed response to the fire on the East Wing of the 10th floor of the building is not due to “architectural lapses”.