Mandatory insurance approved following Kabul fire incident

By Sadaf Shinwari - 25 Dec 2012, 12:17 pm

The Afghan ministers’ cabinet meeting chaired by Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Monday afternoon decided to enforce mandatory insurance law for all commercial zones in Afghanistan.

The meeting also focused on recent fire incident in a market in capital Kabul and instructed Afghan Attorney General, Afghan interior ministry and Afghan municipality to investigate the incident in Faiz Mohammad Nasiri market.

The concerned ministries and departments were ordered to probe the main reason behind the fire incident and provide the details of their finding to Afghan presidential palace within the next one week.

In the meantime Afghan urban development and interior ministries were ordered to survey safety measures in commercial zones including fire precautionary measures.

Afghan finance ministry was also ordered to enforce compulsory insurance for all commercial zones within the next three months.

This comes as a huge fire swept through a market in downtown Kabul earlier this week, destroying hundreds of shops and forcing the city’s nearby money exchange to evacuate.

Though the cause of the incident could not be immediately determined, the shopkeepers believed that the incident might have occurred due to shot circuit.

The Afghan capital, which is home to around five million people, has a poor fire safety reputation, though the fire department was upgraded with international help after the fall of the Taliban regime in a US-led invasion in late 2001.

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