The owner of a building located in Mushrefa District and rented to the Medical Commission in Jeddah held the Ministry of Health responsible for any consequences regarding the safety of the building due to the accumulation of old furniture weighing an estimated 10 tons on the building's roof. He said that the accumulation of material threatened the building's safety and might lead to its collapse due to overload. He demanded that the commission vacate the building and remove the scrap metal, tables, iron drawers, chairs and files which he estimated would fill eight large trucks. He pointed out that the Directorate of Health Affairs did not respond to the complaint that he filed three years ago. He expressed apprehension about the disaster that could occur in the case of heavy rainfall due to the fact that all of the drains on the roof were blocked or in case of a fire as the roof was filled with old furniture and the staircase leading to it was blocked. Brig. Gen. Muhammad Al-Ghamdi, Director of Jeddah Civil Defense, said piling up old furniture on the roofs of government buildings poses a great danger to the buildings. He blamed the department that is using the building for the accumulation of clutter including files of papers, which, he said, should have been transferred to an electronic archiving system. Dr. Turki Al-Shareef, Assistant Director of Health in Jeddah, promised to vacate the building in the near future when an alternative building becomes available. He said the scrap and old furniture would be taken to a scrap warehouse, adding that the building is being shared by the Medical Commission and the health center.
