Marshall Islands President Hilda
Heine says Cabinet has endorsed a plan to fast-track
building a new parliament complex.
The Marshall
Islands parliament building, Nitijela, burnt
down around midnight on Monday, with the full impact not
expected to be known for several days.
Heine said the
construction of the new parliament will begin before the end
of this year.
The build will take priority over the
construction of a new capital facility, which was soon to
start.
On Tuesday, RNZ Pacific correspondent in Majuro
said that the parliament chamber and offices, the library
and all archives had been destroyed by the fire.
Giff
Johnson said that the fire started late overnight and nobody
was harmed.
He pointed out that the Marshall Islands
did not have much capacity in firefighting and fire
inspection processes, making it difficult to determine the
cause of the fire.
A Marshall Islands government
spokesperson told
the ABC said there were early signs the fire originated from
a container trailer adjacent to the building.
“At the
time of this report, responders are actively preventing
further damage on the capitol grounds,” the spokesperson
said in a written statement to the
ABC.
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