An official working in the Jeddah Mayor's Office has admitted to issuing a construction permit in violation of municipal regulations, reported Al-Hayat newspaper Saturday. But the office's legal representative said in court here that it was a mistake and completely unintentional. The confession in court came after a citizen, Rashed Al-Shehri, complained that the Mayor's Office had stopped him from building his house despite having a permit. It turned out the permit violated construction regulations and was based on an erroneous map. Khaled Al-Qahtani, the legal consultant in the Mayor's Office, said a mistake was made by an employee, who issued the permit for another construction site adjacent to the one in question. The other site was different, he said. Al-Qahtani, in a memo, defended the Mayor's Office at the Board of Grievances and said issuing a permit does not mean it is valid. In his complaint to the court, Al-Shehri said he was stopped four months after he started building his home. He said he had turned to the court because the decision had cost him “losses of hundreds of thousands of riyals”. Al-Shehri claimed further that he was being singled out by the Mayor's Office and that there were six other buildings going up in the district against regulations. He said the mistake was made by the mayoralty and it had to take responsibility. Al-Shehri said he also filed a complaint with the chairman of the Municipal Council to explain his “suffering”. He said he had completed the first and second floors of his home when he received a notice from South (Al-Janoub) Municipality last September stopping him from further construction. He said the permit allowed him to build seven floors. He said the Mayor's Office had “ignored” the Municipal Council's correspondence. Al-Shehri said he has also appealed to Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, Emir of Makkah region, to intervene. He has also demanded compensation for the losses he incurred during the 11 months when no work took place. He said that the mayoralty has insisted that an official in charge at the time had made a mistake, but it was not taking his losses into account.
