A New Zealand government minister said Tuesday that he hopes the police will take action against engineers responsible for the collapsed building that killed most of the victims of the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch.

Building and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson told Radio New Zealand that the country's two top engineering bodies had said they were powerless to act against engineers responsible for design and construction deficiencies in the Canterbury Television (CTV) building.

The six-storey building collapsed and caught fire in the Feb. 22 quake, killing 115 people, including 64 Asian students studying at an English language school.

"If you had 115 people die in an aircraft ... or you had 115 people die in a medical misadventure in a hospital the public would be clamoring for somebody to be brought to answer," Williamson told Radio New Zealand.

The only option remaining was a police prosecution, as he did not have powers under any legislation to pursue the matter, he said.

Earlier this month, Police National Headquarters had said it was still engaged in complex technical assessments of documents from the Canterbury Earthquakes Royal Commission of Inquiry and the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, said the report.

Williamson said legislation might be needed to enable sanctions in future cases.

The commission's report released in December last year detailed how the CTV building, which was designed in 1986 and completed around 1988, had a "design that was deficient in a number of important respects" and should never have been issued with a construction permit because it failed to comply with Christchurch City Council regulations.

The commission also found the building was never properly structurally assessed after being damaged in strong earthquakes on Sept. 4 and Dec. 26, 2010, despite being inspected by three building officials.

Seventeen students from the Chinese mainland, 28 from Japan, two from South Korea, 10 from the Philippines, one from Taiwan and six from Thailand were among those incinerated or crushed in the building, an inquest heard in August last year.

The 6.3-magnitude quake on Feb. 22, 2011, killed 185 people in total. Endi

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