File photo used for representation.
DOHA: As the Ministry of Municipality and Environment has intensified its crackdown on partitioned villas, more violations have been detected in different parts of the city, a senior official of the Doha Municipality said yesterday.
Ibrahim Abdullah Al Harami, Technical Monitoring Department Director at Doha Municipality said that since the beginning of this month, the municipal inspectors have caught 26 building-related violations and of these 12 were related to partitioned villas.
This indicates an increase compared to last month, when 33 building violations were detected of which 13 were related to illegal partitioning of villas and other buildings.
“We have intensified the inspection campaign against partitioned villas because they pose a risk to safety and security of the people and put pressure on water and electricity consumption as well as sanitation and parking,” said Al Harami, in an interview with The Peninsula.
He said more partitioned villas have been found in densely populated areas like Al Najma, Umm Ghuwailina and old Airport.
Both the owner and operator of the building will face punishment in case of an illegal partitioning. The owner will face fine of QR400 for every linear metre of the partitioned area and QR200 in case of a reconciliation. If the violation is repeated he will be blacklisted and barred from obtaining new building permits and from doing any transactions until he rectifies the error.
The operator will face fines ranging from QR10,000 to QR100,000 and in case of reconciliation he has to pay a maximum QR50,000 and will be forced to rectify the violation.
“There are many ways for inspectors to identify partitioned villas like looking at car parking, complaints from neighbours. Accordingly we take a permission from the Public Prosecution Department for inspection, valid for 15 days, accompanied by the police,” said Al Harami.
As for encroachment of public space, the offender will face fine ranging from QR3,000 to QR6,000 and he will be asked to remove the encroachment. If he fails to do so, the authorities will remove it on his expense.
He said, this month the Department has caught three such encroachments.
However, companies facing a space problem can take a special permission to use public space one or two meters from the street on a temporary basis. Then the company has to restore the place in its old form, said the official.
The inspectors have also caught 10 violations related to excavations include like not taking permission for excavation and a failure to meet the safety and security requirements.
He said the Department is also receiving a number of complaints from families about single workers staying in residential areas, which is banned by the law.
