The first report of the Observatory on the post-earthquake reconstruction program in the Great Atlas, affiliated with the "Transparency Morocco" association, concluded that the government was unable to fulfill its promises announced a year after the incident, confirming the existence of "stumbling management."
Slow reconstruction
The report, which was presented today, Friday, in Rabat, came in sixty pages and started from September 2023 to October 2024, and monitored "the slowness of the reconstruction process in the areas affected by the Al Haouz earthquake during this period," as the process faces practical and structural difficulties through the sequence of stages of providing the first installment of support, the redesign plan, and obtaining building materials. On the other hand, it indicated that the provision of the second installment of support put citizens in a state of confusion, confirming that "the rates of providing the third and fourth installments of support for reconstruction remained at very low levels."
After praising the efforts of the Royal Armed Forces, the Mohammed V Foundation, and the efforts of civil society actors in responding to some of the population's needs due to the harsh cold period, it warned that "this was not enough, as most people remained managing their affairs with simple means."
The Observatory, in its report supported by the "Heinrich Böll" Foundation, criticized the building standards and the restrictions imposed by the financial aid provided to the victims, indicating that they "are moving in the direction of cement construction, far from the King's instructions calling for the preservation of the cultural and architectural heritage of the region."
In another context, the report considered that the method of disbursing direct aid "was generally done well, with complaints recorded from beneficiaries about the distance from bank branches and high bank transfer fees."
To reach these assessments, the Observatory started from the first stages that characterized the state's commitments towards the incident, through meetings and Royal directives, reaching the stages of formulating these commitments and goals, then adopting the necessary legal and institutional mechanisms, and determining the budget.
The same document said: "For the first year of implementing the commitments, the funding package allocated to the program was not characterized by clarity in terms of budget goals; as the contributions from five sources that were identified until September 20, 2024, were not announced. Also, the contributions of local authorities and international cooperation were not announced by the government during the work of the inter-ministerial committee or during the discussion of the 2024 Finance Bill."
The Observatory noted that the explanatory memorandum of the Solidarity Fund for the 2024 Finance Bill indicates that 4 percent (15 billion dirhams) of public investments for the year 2024 are allocated to the Solidarity Fund for managing the effects of the earthquake, indicating that "it was not determined whether this amount includes the two billion dirhams that were mobilized by the Hassan II Fund."
Summarizing the state's commitments, the report explained that the infrastructure and economic recovery axes did not have their activation goals defined, while the nature of the financial means allocated to environmental commitments, gender approach, and also activation goals were not defined, pointing out that "most of this data was accompanied by the absence of accurate information from the government."
Dominance of authority agents
The Observatory criticized the delay in activating the Great Atlas Development Agency, saying that "this made the management of the disaster in the first year characterized by the absence of comprehensive governance, which led to the belief that the inter-ministerial committee was the one that took charge of this task."
In this regard, the Observatory tracked the meetings of this committee, stating: "After four meetings since the earthquake occurred, public opinion is no longer informed about the participants. On the other hand, it was noted that the time period between each meeting could be an explanation for the delay experienced by the implementation of programs on the ground, and the absence of progress at the field level."
The Observatory criticized "the dominance of authority agents in managing field programs, from counting the victims, and obtaining aid for reconstruction... in addition to not respecting the standards set by the Royal Court's statement in distributing tents to the victims, and the absence of equality in access to reconstruction aid, and a 20 percent decrease in the total potential beneficiaries of the 140,000 dirham aid related to completely collapsed houses."
The Observatory concluded by confirming that "the situation of the education and health sector in the areas affected by the Al Haouz earthquake is still far in reality from the level of ministerial and governmental promises," considering that "all this data warns of the growth of a social movement among the frustrated population."
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