Running tap floods building

 By JAMES APA GUMUNO SEVERAL companies and statutory bodies housed at the AGC building in Mt Hagen city have lost goods, equipment, files and other property worth thousands of kina when the building was flooded last Thursday night by a water tap that had been left on.

Last Friday morning the building was closed from 7am to 11am as employees of different organisations and businesses that have offices in the building, armed with mops, rags and brooms, cleaned out their flooded offices and retrieved whatever they could that was not soaked in water. 

The flooding reportedly started from the top floor and spread to other offices and shops below.

It was alleged that someone turned on the water taps in one of the top offices last Thursday night but since there was no water, they forgot to turn off the tap.

Some of the tenants at the building are the regional office of the Solicitor-General, Coffee Industry Corporation, City Pharmacy, FinCorp, Drumstar Computers, Yaibos Estate Ltd, Sally’s Saloon, Central Business System, Digicel and bemobiles’ sale offices, and a couple of second hand clothing shops located on the ground and first floor were badly affected by water.

Meanwhile, according to one of the four legal officers working in the  Solicitor-General’s office, who requested anonymity, said current running files for clients in the region were all soaked and destroyed by water.

She said she kept all the files in the manila folders and left it on the floor without knowing that such flood would happen and destroyed the files.

She said that she could not retrieve her current running files. 

She said her back-up file was still intact but it would take some time in order to update all the information onto the back-up file.