Baghdad Embassy Is Called A Fire Risk

Baghdad Embassy Is Called A Fire Risk
'Serious' Problems Were Ignored, Says State Dept. Official


The firefighting system in the massive $736 million embassy complex in Baghdad has potential safety problems that top U.S. officials dismissed in their rush to declare construction largely completed by the end of last year, according to internal State Department documents, e-mails and interviews.

Some officials assert that in the push to complete the long-delayed project, potentially life-threatening problems have been left untouched. "This is serious enough to get someone killed," said a State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation. "The fire systems are the tip of the iceberg. That is the most visible. But no one has ever inspected the electrical system, the power plant" and other parts of the embassy complex, which will house more than 1,000 people and is vulnerable to mortar attacks.

Other sources involved in the project, also requesting anonymity, insist that disputes involve technical paperwork issues, largely because the contractor had never built an embassy and did not realize that under State Department rules it needed approval for substituting certain materials. Now, much of that work needs to be reexamined and checked, they said, substantially delaying the project's completion.

The finger-pointing over fire safety is a microcosm of the suspicion that hangs over the troubled project, which is built on acreage almost four times the size of the Pentagon. Originally expected to be completed by July 1, 2007, at a cost of $592 million, the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world has been plagued by poor planning, shoddy workmanship and design changes that have added to the cost. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of the contract and related subcontracts, sources said.

more -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/11/AR2008011103772.html?hpid=topnews

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"EVERY US LABOUR LAW WAS BROKEN"

Supplementing Krongard's review, the coalition Multi-National Force inspector general in Baghdad also interviewed 36 workers from seven different countries at the new embassy site in December. The MNF-I IG claimed it found no evidence to indicate the presence of severe forms of labour trafficking, but did find a workers from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka reported deceptive hiring practices by recruitment agencies in their home countries. The said they had been promised higher pay, shorter hours and days off. "A large majority of workers" from the Indian subcontinent incurred recruiting fees of up to one year's salary.

Chapman and others also claim that standard safety procedures on the project frequently went unobserved. Many worked without safety harnesses when off the ground and had no hardhats or boots. Work clothes were dirty and tattered. Those that had them had only one set of work clothes so they were rarely washed. They became dirty and tattered, causing rashes and sores.

Some worked in sandals, others in bare feet. "They had their toes curled around the rebar like birds," Lopez remembers.

"Every US labour law was broken," says an American labour foreman, John Owens, who adds that he never witnessed a safety meeting. Once an Egyptian worker fell and broke his back and was sent home. No one ever heard from him again. "The accident might not have happened if there was a safety program and he had known how to use a safety harness," charges Owen, who left the embassy project last June.

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Read the rest at http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0405/0405-WD-DP-howusemb.htm

Where is the outrage?

Shit is flammable.