Mayor claims council became ‘homeless’ after fire

Male’ City Mayor Adam Azim has said he pleaded with the government and authorities to provide accommodation for Male’ City Council after its offices were destroyed in the fire in green building earlier on December 12^th.

The green building housed offices of the City Council along with the Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Construction and Infrastructure, and the Ministry of Environment.

While speaking on SSTV’s “Editaruge Suvaalu” program, Azim said the biggest challenge for the council authority was finding a suitable accommodation for its operations after the fire, and added the authority had to move its documents to venues provided by three schools that fell under the council’s jurisdiction.

“These are really small halls, but we are talking about a lot of documents related to a lot of people, and sorting these documents require a larger space. The government had not provided us any place for us. When they made setups for three of the ministries at Dharubaaruge, they did not give any space for us from the venue,” Azim said.

Highlighting the council authority handled several crucial documents related to the citizens, Azim said the government is obligated to provide a space for the authority. Azim also said the council would not have anywhere to go otherwise.

“I contacted Minister Adam Shareef, and CEO of LGA, Nimal since LGA is the parent authority of councils. I told them the council did not have any office, and pleaded to them to provide us with a space,” Azim added.

He further said writing to other senior government officials, imploring to provide an office space at the earliest, which included President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, the Ministry of Finance, and the Ministry of Cities, Local Government and Public Works.

Upon learning there was vacant space in the Umar Zahir Office Building in Hulhumale’, Azim said he had requested from the relevant government authority to provide space from the building but to no avail.

He said the council had so far received the hall of Thaajuddeen School for its operations.

Following the fire, the council shifted all of its vital services to Hulhumale’ which Azim said will now be available from Male’ effective from Saturday.

The Mayor also expressed confidence of recovering 99 percent of the documents out of those damaged in the fire.