Mayor: 99 percent of documents can be recovered with DJA, DNR’s assistance

Male’ City Mayor Adam Azim has expressed hope of recovering 99 percent of the documents damaged in the fire at Green Building last Thursday.

One part of the building which was significantly damaged housed an office of Male’ City Council. The office kept records of crucial documents related to Male’ residents such as birth certificates, death certificates and registries of buildings and houses that were damaged in the fire.

The City Council is currently undertaking efforts to organize the documents that were salvaged.

Speaking during an appearance at Sun’s ‘Editaruge Suvaal’ program, Azim said the City Council will conclude this work and resume normal services starting Sunday.

“Our work will resume on Sunday. However, it will not be at the same speed as before. We will be commencing the services through an online system,” he detailed.

Azim expressed hope of receiving assistance from the Department of Judicial Administration (DJA) and Department of National Registration (DNR) in recovering the documents that were damaged in the fire. In this trajectory, he said the Council has already appealed for assistance with these authorities. He remained positive on recovering 99 percent of the documents that were damaged.

“We are hopeful of retrieving a significant percentage of the damaged documents through DNR and DJA’s archive. We do also have some documents scanned and stored. Hence, we project that we will be able to recover more [documents] than what we previously thought,” he said.

A major concern for the City Council is the absence of a dedicated building for their offices. At present, different departments are situated at various locations. The biggest challenge the Council faced after the fire was the lack of an alternative location to move the operations affected by the fire.

Azim said he called and wrote to Local Governance Minister Adam Shareef and the Local Government Authority (LGA) seeking assistance to find a temporary office; however, has not received much assistance in this trajectory so far.

“These are documents that are crucial to the people. The whole government should comprehend the magnitude of the work we are doing.  There is no place we can go to if the government does not show us one. We should have been provided a space just as set ups were done for government ministries in Dharubaaruge at that moment,” he stressed.

Efforts to organize Male’ City Council’s documents salvaged in the fire are ongoing at Galolhu Madharusa’s hall.

The Council has stated that efforts to recover the lost documents will begin once it is determined which documents are missing, a process that can only occur once the organization is complete.

As per Azim, the Council has resolved to ensure the safety of the documents even in the event of a future fire as one of its biggest aims.