SANAA--Hassiba Ali al-Mansur sits in an entertaining room of her five-storey house in Sana’a’s Old City. The housewife has a lot on her mind as she looks around taking stock of her surroundings. The woman and her daughter, who share the house, have gathered all of their furniture in the room where al-Mansur now sits. This includes their bedding.
From the outside, al-Mansur’s house shares the attractive architectural qualities that neighboring ones do, including faded brick towers with white icing-like trim. There is no external indication that al-Masur’s house is on the verge of complete collapse. However, the ceilings of the fourth and fifth floors have already buckled and walls throughout the house are rife with cracks.
Al-Masur has been promised repairs to her home from the National Campaign to Preserve Old Sana’a. The woman’s home is among 400 others in Sana’a’s Old City that have also been identified as at risk and in need of renovation.
The National Campaign to Preserve Old Sana’a was put in charge of making restorations in the Old City at the expense of the government and donors in June of this year following warnings from the United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) that the Old City was going to be axed from its prestigious World Heritage list for repeated construction violations. Taking the international body’s threats seriously, the Culture Ministry and the General Authority for Preserving Historical Cities formed a committee under their auspices to take on reparations and provide oversight.
But the campaign is yet to deliver on any sort of renovations.
“My mother has gone to Hodeida [several times to live] out of fear the house may collapse any moment,” said al-Mansur’s daughter.
Abdulhamīd Qatab, the service manager for the Old City, who is working with the restoration campaign, said they are committed to preventing construction violations, but funds for the housing restoration projects have not yet been allocated.
The walled neighborhood is believed to have been built in the fifth century.
The Capital Secretariat, Sana’a’s central governing body, said they would provide YR600 million (about $2.8 million) in financing for the committee. But, Qatab says, to date, the campaign has only received YR100 million ($465 thousand) from the Local Council and Old Sana’a district’s administration.
“We have renovated nine houses, giving priority to the ones with the most damage and the poorest owners, who can’t afford to renovate their houses,” Qatab says.
Qatab said al-Mansur’s house is included in the committee’s future plans for renovations but they could not provide a date for renovations.
Old City residents, including al-Mansur, are skeptical of promises being made. Although the campaign, with UNESCO’s approval has been given two years to make the necessary renovations of and repairs to the 400 houses, residents say seven months have already passed since the formation of the committee and only a fraction of the targeted homes have been touched.
“The committee is all talk and no action,” said Umm Mohammed, an Old City resident, who is also waiting for renovations of her longtime home.
Part of the problem is the bureaucracy that accompanies a body that is vying for money from different authorities.
Mujahid al-Yatīm, the deputy minister of culture, said their role is to administratively support the committee in charge of renovations, but that their budget is already inadequate to fund their existing operations.
“What can we offer at a time when we have a deficient budget? We cannot support this committee financially,” he said.
Al-Yatīm also complains that, although the Ministry of Culture is supposed to be collaborating with the restoration committee, they are often not present at meetings, and internal disagreements within the committee have delayed operations several times.
While the committee tries to sort itself out financially and administratively, residents continue to grow restless.
Outside one of the neighborhood’s famed houses, a group of women gather, sipping tea and chatting about the neighborhood. The topic of construction comes up almost immediately.
Shu’ya Ali Hasan recalled when the ceiling in her home collapsed. Pieces fell on her mother, who sustained injuries and had to go to the hospital. Hasan says her family has tried to repair the ceiling with cement, which violates construction codes. But she said they had no choice if the committee is not going to follow through and help them.
“How can this city improve at a time when its protector is a thief?!” lamented Hasan’s fellow Old City resident Amina Shaef.
Photo: Abdulla Ali points to his ceiling, which is on the verge of collapse. He says his family has received no help with repairs for their Old City home. Source: Yemen Times.
