Rainy Season Threatens 43,000 Crumbling Homes in Morocco, Residents Fear Collapse

The rainy season is not good news for all Moroccans. While in agricultural circles it is welcomed as a blessing, for some it announces problems, a tragic death. According to the daily Al Ahdath Al Maghribia, the ordeal that awaits the inhabitants of these buildings this year again is enormous during the rainy season, and even throughout the winter.

According to estimates, there would be more than 43,000 dwellings listed as threatening to collapse, including more than 6,000 in the city of Casablanca alone. It is precisely this city that records the most building collapses. Many still remember the tragedy that occurred a few years ago in the Bourgogne district, where three houses collapsed, taking the lives of 23 people. Just a few days ago, a house collapsed in the Sbata district, fortunately without human casualties.

Even if the advanced state of deterioration of these buildings explains these tragedies and the fear in which those who live there live, the daily Al Ahdath Al Maghribia points out that the danger comes mainly from the policy put in place to evacuate the families who sometimes refuse to leave these homes even if they know they are in grave danger.

Some families explain this stubbornness, this way of defying death, by their difficulties in raising the share required to benefit from housing in the real estate programs set up for this purpose. Others, on the other hand, deliberately refuse to leave, because they believe they have the right to have the same favors that the government grants to the inhabitants of the slums.

Pending the finding of the appropriate strategy, lives continue to be decimated by this type of collapse. The daily reveals that in the city of Casablanca alone, there are 9,000 families concerned by the program launched by the authorities to overcome this situation. Likewise, several hundred houses located in the Anfa district are listed for demolition as soon as they are evacuated.