241 Committee to summon Police, Defence Ministry over fire incident

The Parliament Committee on National Security Services (241 Committee) has decided to summon the Maldives Police Service and the Ministry of Defence in relation to Thursday’s fire that burned down the green building that housed multiple government ministries.

The damaged buildings housed the Ministry of Housing, Ministry of Construction and Infrastructure, Ministry of Environment, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and offices of Male’ City Council.

The affected government ministries have been relocated to Dharubaaruge on Sunday.

While many raising questions regarding the fire, the Maldivian Democratic Party’s (MDP) parliamentary group during a press briefing on Monday said it would make a request to the parliament to convene an extraordinary sitting regarding the matter, and added it would implore the 241 Committee to launch an investigation on the matter as well.

Not long after MDP made the statements, the Deputy Speaker of the Parliament and Dhiggaru MP Ahmed Nazim, confirmed the 241 Committee’s chair, Eydhafushi MP Ahmed Saleem has decided to summon the Defence Ministry and Maldives Police Service to the committee’s meeting scheduled for 10:00hrs this Thursday.

The opposition party has raised serious questions regarding the fire while it alleged negligence on the part of authorities in extinguishing the flames. The party has decided to lodge cases with the police and Police Integrity Commission to conduct investigations into potential negligence of the law enforcement authority.

Meanwhile, many public members have expressed concerns about the possible loss of several crucial documents in the fire.

In response to these concerns, the Male’ City Council said it managed to save 90 percent of its documents, which the authority is currently trying to assort to assess the extent of data loss.

Moreover, the Minister of Construction and Infrastructure Dr. Abdulla Muththalib affirmed none of the documents related to housing were destroyed in the fire, but some documents related to land use plans of a few islands were destroyed according to Minister of Housing Dr. Ali Haidar.