In the “Aghraman” roundabout, in the Al Haouz region, Ait Belaid Mohamed, 72 years old, stands in front of his new home, and says with a smile: “I benefited from the partial support, and I received an amount of eighty thousand dirhams, as compensation for rebuilding, and I added about 100 thousand dirhams from my pocket, but thank God for God’s will. I liked my new home and I am comfortable in it.”
Two stories...two destinies
Ait Belaid, who got rid of a tent in which he spent seasons of intense heat and bitter cold, was living before the earthquake in a house extending over about 400 square meters, and including a part designated for livestock. As for the new house, its area does not exceed 63 square meters, but, for him, it means, above all, the return of stability.
“My livestock died during the earthquake, and I put what was left in a place not far from the house. Thank God, I have no problem. This house is enough for me, my wife, and my five children, who are independent,” Ait Belaid says, adding: “I thank the king, the responsible authorities, and the benefactors for their cooperation with us. I am happy and relieved because I, my wife, and my children are in good health, and I have not lost any of them.”
Only 20 kilometers away, at Azkor roundabout, the picture looks completely different. There, Ait Jalloulat Al-Arabi, also 72 years old, sits in front of a house of which only rubble remains. He asks angrily, "I want to know where my right went, who took my right? For three years, I have been moving from administration to administration, from complaint to complaint, from petitioner to petitioner. I am just searching for the answer. Why was I excluded? Am I not a Moroccan citizen?"
Al-Arabi was an employee of the group before his retirement, and he says that he spent years of his life saving in order to build the house, which was completed in 2013. He exclaims angrily: “My only dream was to spend the rest of my life and rest from the years of service in my home. They say that I am not a resident. How is it possible that I am not a resident when I am a native of the region from my grandfather?! I live in the region and my house is in the region?! As you can see, here I am sitting on its rubble. Where is the logic!?” The seventy-year-old man continues, devastated: “My name was included during the census carried out by the committee, only to be surprised later that I was excluded without a convincing explanation.”
Al-Arabi continues: “Recently, I received an offer to benefit from a plot of land with an area of 35 square metres, in exchange for my contribution of ten thousand dirhams, but how will I live in this space? It will not be enough for me, after I was an honorable resident of a house with an area of 110 square metres.”
Between two villages...two paths for reconstruction
In the “Agherman” roundabout, in the Amizmiz community, the reconstruction process appears to be more advanced. Omar Al-Saeed, on behalf of the Agerman Association for Development and Solidarity, says that the reconstruction of the roundabout has reached about 90 percent, and that most of the residents have resumed their lives.
Out of about 150 families, 114 families benefited from the support, while other homes are still under construction, while other families did not benefit because their homes were classified as not eligible for support.
14 families benefited from the total support, while the majority of families received partial support, forcing some of them to complete construction with their own money or by selling their livestock.
On the other hand, in the “Izkor” roundabout, the situation is more complicated, and it is the most affected roundabout in Amizmiz. According to Al-Arabi, about 76 families benefited from the reconstruction, while the fate of 56 families is still pending. He added: “The tents have been removed from the area without alternatives, and what is more, the 76 families who rebuilt their homes in a location different from their original locations are also facing difficulties related to connection to water and electricity.”
The government had announced in July 2025 that the number of plastic tents remaining in the affected areas had decreased to 47 tents, before the Minister of National Territorial Preparation, Construction, Housing and City Policy, Fatima Al-Zahraa Al-Mansouri, revealed in November of the same year, the continued presence of about 30 tents and about 1,000 huts sheltering some of those affected.
Advanced numbers and stuck files
According to a report dated March 17, 2026 by the High Atlas Development Agency, which was created in October 2023, with the mission of rebuilding and rehabilitating the affected areas, 54,425 homes had been completed or rehabilitated, more than 3,000 homes were still under construction, more than 7.2 billion dirhams of financial support were directed to affected families, including 4.7 billion dirhams to support Rebuilding and rehabilitating homes, and more than 2.5 billion dirhams in emergency aid worth 2,500 dirhams per month, while more than 63 thousand families benefited from the emergency aid.
While the Ministry of Economy and Finance, for its part, clarified that the number of beneficiaries of direct reconstruction aid, estimated at 140,000 dirhams, did not exceed 5,669 families only, while the assistance for rehabilitating uninhabitable homes, amounting to 80,000 dirhams, included 51,983 families.
For his part, Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch had called for “increasing the pace of work” in order to complete the remaining projects and provide effective field answers to the affected residents. However, the National Coordination for Victims of the Al Haouz Earthquake stresses that part of the problem is not only related to the speed of construction, but also to the families who say they were not originally included in the lists of beneficiaries.
Demands for an investigation
Commenting on these numbers, Muntaser Athri said on behalf of the National Coordination for Victims of the Al Haouz Earthquake, saying, “The government is trying to market us, the victims of the Al Haouz Earthquake, as numbers related to progress in construction, the removal of tents, and the number of remaining plastic tents, and not as human beings, a human being with dignity, and a purely humanitarian file, not a number.” Montaser considers the aforementioned amounts of support “insufficient” because “the majority live in unfinished homes, and others resisted and paid from their own money, pockets, and loans to complete their home, so that nothing remained of a painted box on the outside.”
Montaser Athari, on behalf of the coordination committee, estimates the number of complaints it has received at more than 3,000 complaints from families excluded from benefiting. Montasser defines it as: “They are families that were excluded because of their national ID addresses in the cities in which they work, after socio-economic conditions forced them to migrate in order to work and help their relatives in the mountains, but they were surprised by the words ‘non-resident’ or ‘non-resident’! And others were excluded with the justification of inheritance or something else.”
At the same time, the coordination demands a “transparent and independent investigation” into what it considers “imbalances in the management of the file,” due to the presence of dozens of complaints filed against the authority’s agents.
Building in the mountain...is a more complex task
In addition to the families who did not benefit, after three years there are still major technical and geographical challenges associated with the rebuilding process in mountainous areas. Architect Mohamed Belmjad attributes part of the delay in the construction process to the difficult terrain, the distance of some circles from paved roads, the difficulty of transporting building materials and rubble, the problems of connecting to water and electricity, and the need in some cases to move villages or change construction sites to avoid risks associated with drifts.
In addition to these factors, there is the need to respect local architectural privacy in current projects.
Taking into account all of this, the architect finds the period relatively “logical,” especially with “the lack of competencies, whether among architects, study or contracting offices, and even the labor needed for construction.” He says that “when the disaster occurred, it was not possible to stop construction in Morocco, so that all competencies and labor would go to the property.”
With the elections approaching... “Where have they been all these years?!”
Fawzia Aliban, one of those affected, has hopes for the elections, saying: “Akhannouch (the head of the Moroccan government) came and promised us to resolve the issue, and we are waiting, and God knows best. We hope that the problems will be solved, because I was deprived of benefit even though my house is on the verge of collapse.”
As for Mohamed Belkaid, nicknamed “The Hero,” he is one of the people who still lives in a tent with his four children. He says: “I was deprived of benefit under the pretext that I was a fraud. Three years have passed and no one remembers us. Recently, some electoral faces have begun to appear that promise us to solve the problem. I feel exploited. Now we have become residents and citizens, and they promise to study our files, and they ask us to put our trust in them and vote on them, and this is It is called exploitation. If they wanted to solve the problem honestly, they would have solved it before the elections. Where have they been all these years?
