The committee that has been formed to look into the reconstruction of the burned portion of the Mubarakiya Market said the committee members have decided to assign the job to the Kuwait Municipality.
The committee members include personnel from the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, Public Authority for Civil Information, the Kuwait Municipality and National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, and during the meeting, the Ministry of Finance gave its vision for the Mubarakiya area and called for an economic study to invest the reconstruction of the site looking at an annual rental value of 3.6 million dinars through BOT system to recover the money spent on the reconstruction of the market, reports a local Arabic daily.
The Ministry of Finance believes that the investment of the site may contribute to achieving an expected increase in the state’s revenues, estimating the affected area at approximately 5,000 square meters of the site’s total area.
The Finance Ministry asked the Kuwait Municipality and the Ministry of Justice to identify private property, proposing the application of the 1964 Expropriation Law for the Public Benefit in the event that the owners of private property in Mubarakiya refused to adopt the principle of development.
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Justice, Omar Al-Sharqawi, stated that the ministry has coordinated with the Kuwait Municipality to look for anything that was been registered in real estate properties list to identify the owners of the property through the number of each plot, in order to extract all information related to the ownership of those plots, pending their response, while the Minister of Finance inquired about the owners of private property if they have the right to object to the reconstruction plan for the Mubarakiya area, and if the government has the right to rebuild without contacting them by applying the expropriation law for the benefit of the public and the extent of the legality of this matter, given the length of time that it may take to account for the data of those affected.
With regard to commercial licenses, the Acting Undersecretary of the Ministry of Commerce, Muhammad Al-Enezi, said that coordination has been made with the Public Authority Civil Information to extract the automated numbers of the shops affected by the Mubarakiya fire, so that they can obtain these licenses.
The PACI Director-General Musaed Al-Asousi, stated that the authority had been approached by the Kuwait Municipality with a request to provide them with the automated numbers of the damaged shops complete with the sketch indicating their locations in the Mubarakiya area.
The Kuwait Municipality was provided with the required automated numbers and the committee was also provided With this data on a flash memory chip, and with regard to the future vision for the development of the Mubarakiya area, he suggested the presence of checkpoints that supervise the violating shops in the Mubarakiya area to warn them, and then close those shops in the event of non-response, and also indicated that there were previous discussions with the Ministry of Justice And the Kuwait Municipality to approve the automatic number in all documents, and the Secretary-General of the National Council for Culture and Arts linked it to all parties.
The Secretary General of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters, Dr. Issa Al-Ansari, said the role of the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters in this matter is limited to supervision only, as it was previously stated that the Council does not have any shops damaged in the Mubarakiya fire, and also confirmed that the Council is fully prepared to support the rest of the authorities, and provide advice to them in the area of reconstructing the Mubarakiya area and preserving its historical identity and distinctive architectural style.
The Deputy Director General of the Projects Sector in the Kuwait Municipality, Eng. Nadia Al-Shraideh, a preliminary report from the Kuwait Municipality for the reconstruction of the burned part of the Mubarakiya market through the technical office PACE, due to the need for more time to make the survey plan and check it before circulating it to the rest of the authorities, and after receiving the automated numbers from PACI, it was found that there were many fake commercial licenses, and accordingly, the Kuwait Municipality is awaiting the report of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, in coordination with the PACI, which will determine the real commercial licenses that were issued and verifying the validity of all information.
The meeting came up with the following recommendations:
► Communication and coordination between the authorities to complete all data and complete the required reports
► Assigning the Kuwait Municipality to adopt the initial concept submitted by it
► Reconstruction of the burned part of Souk Al Mubarakiya, according to the study of the Technical Office
► Providing the committee with the comprehensive municipal maps of the Mubarakiya area, and their report on its development
► Assigning the NCCAL to coordinate with academic experts at the Kuwait University, to provide the committee with their views on the redevelopment of the Mubarakiya Market
► Establishing a committee consisting of several bodies to detect violating shops
► Designating a single entity to be responsible for the security and safety of the Mubarakiya area and its heritage markets, and for managing privately owned shops
► Provide the committee with the legal opinion on obligating owners to develop, in case they object
► The possibility of adopting the automatic number in all documents and linking them to all parties