Marrakech Faces Housing Crisis as Nearly 2,000 Buildings at Risk of Collapse

The beauty of the ochre city is increasingly marred by houses that threaten to collapse. This is what the Ménara section of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) indicated in a press release, having made a deplorable assessment and calling on the authorities for help, reports Al Massae.

Thus, in two notes addressed on September 25, 2018 and November 3, 2019 to the Marrakech city council, the AMDH had indicated the cases of Sidi Mbarek and Douar Arib. Following a sit-in organized in front of the headquarters of the Ménara district, "a meeting was held between members of civil society and the office of the district council, a meeting where the president of the district was conspicuous by his absence," on February 5, 2020, the same media reports, adding that at the end of the meeting, a commission was set up "to take stock, from February 20 of the same year, of the houses threatening to collapse and update the signage in the area".

A year later, nothing has been done, laments the AMDH, curious to know the reasons for the abandonment of the site, since the municipality is linked to the Ministry of the Interior and the Department of Habous and Islamic Affairs by agreements under which subsidies are released for this purpose. The AMDH also denounces the complacency of the municipality, while the phenomenon continues to grow.

Currently, the number of houses threatening to collapse continues to increase, warns the Association, indicating that the number has gone from 1,400 to 1,600, with a hundred belonging to the Ministry of Habous and Islamic Affairs. Following this deplorable observation, the association calls on the competent authorities to react, by developing action plans that can allow residents to maintain their homes.