Ajman: The Emirates Identity Authority has exempted the residents of Ajman One towers, which were damaged in a massive fire last week, from paying the fees for reissuing new ID cards.
Two towers — 8 and 6 — were damaged in the fire on March 29.
Colonel Abdullah Al Hamrani, Deputy Chief of Ajman Police, said the initiative is a gesture of support to the hundreds of victims who had to leave the tower.
Col. Al Hamrani urged the residents who lost their documents to approach the Ajman Police for the authorisation letter to the authorities concerned to get their documents reissued.
Meanwhile, Ghaleib Jabar, CEO of Ajman One, told Gulf News on Saturday that the towers are fully insured which covers everything, even furniture, he said, reassuring affected residents.
He said engineers have started assessing the damage in apartments. Each tower has 280 apartments.
In some apartments, only the balconies were affected, he said.
He said the residents are still provided with accommodation in hotels in Ajman and Sharjah.
“We took the residents to hotels and are paying for them. Red Crescent Authority offered to help, but we prefer to pay for the residents’ accommodation,” he said.
Several tenants had earlier told Gulf News that they lost everything in the fire. “My studio flat looks completely destroyed. I’ve lost my passport, my degrees, belongings — everything,” said Dr Shiraz Shaikh, an Indian tenant of Tower 6.
Some of them said they had no fire insurance cover. Some tenants had rented their flats directly from owners of the freehold apartments while others had rented through agents.
Colonel Saleh Al Matroushi, Director-General of Ajman Civil Defence, had said the fire broke out in an apartment in Tower 8 and spread to the adjacent building because of strong winds and the aluminium cladding.
