Moving Forward (Part Three)

Well, the weekend came and went and (predictably) we still didn’t have our V2 permission to start building work.

A couple more false starts were initially to blame, with us turning up to get the piece of paper and finding it hadn’t been signed by the inspector, coming back and finding he was away and so on.

Today we finally had what we thought was the permission, only to find out it was just the document saying we had to pay 500dh to obtain the permission. However when we tried to immediately pay them at the baladiya’s office (in the medina), it turned out that the payment had to be lodged at another office, this time in the new town.

We were familiar with this office – this was the same place as the attestation fiscale debacle. Thankfully it was quiet this time and a woman at a desk quickly pointed us to the counter where we had to pay, which we did.

Heading out the door, we suddenly realised that it had probably been a bit too easy and decided to call our builder to check if anything else was required. Ah yes. We needed to go back to the first woman at the desk and get another bit of paper, which she of course had failed to mention during our initial enquiry.

We went back up the steps and gave her the receipt only for her to tell us we needed the attestation fiscale to go with it. As it was the same woman from our visit the previous week, she remembered that she had the document in her desk drawer– the same document that we’d been waiting for, expecting it to appear via post as promised at least a week before. Who knows what would have happened if we’d been to a different person’s desk. Anyway, she produced the attestation fiscale, now appropriately signed and stamped (the Moroccans love their stamps on documents, the more the better it seems) and told us we needed to photocopy it and the receipt and come back.

Dutifully we headed across the road to the (now also familiar) teleboutique, obtained the copies and trudged back up the stairs again.

A few scribbles later and we were told that was all we needed to do. Scarcely believing that we’d actually got the permission, we asked her again if there was anything else. She checked with a colleague and no, that was it. Still wary, we called our builder again and triple checked. “You have the small orange receipt?” Check. “And a white piece of paper?” Check. “Ok, now you need to go back to the baladiya’s office in the medina to get the actual permission document”. Of course.

Back in the car (thank goodness we brought it – catching taxi’s back and forth would have been a nightmare) we returned to the baladiya’s office once more.

Handing over the receipt and the attestation fiscale, there was momentary confusion. “You don’t need that for a V2,” the lady said. Ok then. Just the receipt (aaaarrrgh!). A few more scribbles and stamps and we were done. This was the correct piece of paper! We finally had our V2 Simple building permission! Work could now start on the house…elated we grinned and high-fived as we walked triumphantly out of the office. ‘Simple’ permission? Someone had a sense of humour. We hardly dared to think about how difficult getting the authorisation to do the structural work would be.

That afternoon we had another meeting with our architect to check the changes we’d discussed and view the altered plans. We also had the elusive attestation fiscale to finally hand over to him, completing the document package for the proper authorisation we were about to start trying for.

Joyfully Vince handed over the annoying piece of paper we’d randomly managed to collect from the bureaucrat woman’s desk drawer earlier. The architect inspected it, turned it over and sighed. What now?

“You need to take this to the other office with your passport and get it stamped on the back,” he said. Un. F**king. Believable. Why couldn’t bureaucrat desk woman have mentioned that when she handed it over? Because that would be helpful. Because that would be doing her job. Because nobody has any idea what the f**k is going on most of the time.

Cue gritted teeth and forced smile. Fine. We would do that tomorrow. And then bring it back again.

So, back to the plans. “Here are the drawings of what we discussed last week, showing the changes you want to make to the structure.” Mmmhmm. Nope, not quite. No window there, no arch there, that’s a cupboard not a toilet, we wanted a door there, that’s not the shape of the room actually and so on. Lines were drawn and redone and he shuffled over to his assistant to have her make the changes immediately on the computer. Some time later the alterations were printed out again and we rechecked them. Mmmhmm. Almost, but not quite. You forgot the fountain, those are not arches it’s a completely open balcony, there’s no wall there etc. This process was repeated several times over the course of an hour and eventually we had the plans correct, bar a few more minor alterations. We’re meeting him again on Friday once he’s had a chance to complete the detailed plans and then we should be done. Except for the contract we apparently have to draw up with him and take to the baladiya’s office. That should be fun.