Casablanca Cracks Down on Illegal Factories Threatening Public Health and Environment

Starting from the observation that certain industrial factories are carrying out activities that pose risks to the health of citizens and environmental safety, particularly the manufacture of cleaning products, the wali of the Casablanca-Settat region sent requests for clarification to workers in different areas concerning the legal situation of these factories. This was followed by meetings at the prefecture level, bringing together caids, pachas and officials from the economic and health departments, in order to take stock of the number of non-regulatory industrial units, to verify the legal situation of the land hosting them and to identify individual operators and companies, reports Hespress.

It was discovered that individuals and legal entities are illegally exploiting land belonging to them, but which are not part of the urban classification of industrial zones or commercial or service activity zones. According to previous reports from the auxiliary authorities, manufacturing activities of food and chemical products using hazardous materials threatening the surrounding health are carried out in the constructed establishments. However, these were warehouses for storing goods.

The prefecture officials confirmed that a large number of industrial factories did not have the necessary authorizations for professional and industrial exploitation, according to the development plans. These constructions were located on agricultural land and other undivided properties, the investigations reveal. In addition, there would have been manipulations in the permit applications for industrial units. It was thus discovered that the applicants had followed the administrative procedure for obtaining building permits in rural areas and had obtained the necessary authorizations, but without receiving the certificates of conformity for housing, and that they had maintained the appearance of the constructions as closed construction sites in order to exploit them secretly.