Several citizens who are beneficiaries of the "Argana" real estate operation in Essaouira, scandalised by the blockage that the project has been experiencing for four years, have just contacted the Ministries of the Interior and Housing, the Wali of the Marrakech-Tensift-El Haouz region, the Governor of Essaouira and the Regional Human Rights Commission.

The said letters confirm everything that was published by Libé on 18 June 2010 following the outbreak of a series of protests by dozens of citizens who condemned the method of allocating the plots and the nature of the beneficiaries. Sit-ins and petitions that described the allocation of plots to local officials as "major corruption" were the most striking reactions condemning this operation, which seems to have benefited only the city's real estate lobby, while the vast majority of citizens who have never benefited from economic housing or plots seem to have been sidelined.

According to the said letters, the "Argana" subdivision, composed of 240 plots, is the result of a modification not authorised or provided for by the initial design of the project.

Let us recall that Argana is a real estate project by the operator Al Omrane, authorised on 13 July 2007 by a derogation commission meeting under the chairmanship of the former Wali of Marrakech, the former Governor of Essaouira, the regional directorate of housing, the director of the Regional Investment Centre, among others. The derogation had authorised the realisation of the Argana project on an area of 38 hectares forming part of the forest domain of Essaouira with a dune zone and a unique biodiversity, on the condition that the project be entirely built by the real estate operator, and that the latter contribute 5 million dirhams for the development of the city's southern corniche, and contribute up to 30 DH/m2 for the construction of the wastewater pipe connecting Argana to the city's treatment plant, among others.

The beneficiaries who have in turn stepped up to claim their plots from "Al Omrane" claim to be living in difficult financial and social conditions because of the loans they contracted with the hope of building their own homes on the acquired plots. They demand the resolution of the problem immediately without excluding the use of various forms of protest to assert their rights and denounce the lobby that is manipulating the file.

After four years, and as predicted by Libé, Al Omrane finds itself facing the beneficiaries and not just those excluded from the Argana subdivision. Because the real problem was purely legal, as the former director of the Urban Agency of Essaouira had confirmed to us.

From a legal point of view, the Argana subdivision represents a flagrant violation of the clauses of the derogation which stipulates the complete realisation of the project by Al Omrane. As a result, any distribution or allocation of plots remains unfounded from a legal point of view as long as there is no new derogation concerning the modification of the project's components.

"Al Omrane only had to formulate a request justifying the reasons for the modifications, to integrate the subdivision concept into the initial project. The same authority would have done the same for the new version which must be justified. Unfortunately, none of this was done. The operator will very soon find itself facing a new crisis opposing it to the happy beneficiaries," an official had declared to us in 2010.