Israel’s State Comptroller issued a harsh report on Tuesday criticizing the Fl-Calc task force in the Planning Administration and the performance of local authorities handling buildings built with the dangerous Fl-Calc construction method. The report says the task force has not met for six years, even though treatment of more than half of the buildings transferred to it is still unfinished, and it warns that the situation has a direct bearing on human life.
According to the audit, about 1,400 suspected Fl-Calc buildings were handed to the task force before it was created roughly two decades ago. Work on 55% of them, 769 buildings, is still not complete. The task force used only about 46% of the budget allocated in the 2006 government decision, roughly 7.1 million shekels out of 15.5 million, and submitted no reports to the interior minister. The local authorities reviewed, Bnei Brak, Jerusalem, Daliyat al-Karmel and the Emek HaMaayanot Regional Council, also failed to submit any annual reports on Fl-Calc buildings between 2018 and 2025.
The auditor said the task force did not meet regularly, did not set work plans, did not maintain an up-to-date reliable database, and had no orderly mechanism to track municipal reporting. He also said the government has not set policy on publishing information about suspected or weakened buildings, and that the task force failed to define repair priorities. The report notes that about 45% of inspected Fl-Calc buildings, 132 out of 295, were found to need strengthening, and 32 of those were not strengthened in practice.
The report also found failures at the municipal level. Daliyat al-Karmel had no list of Fl-Calc buildings until the audit forced it to update one, while the other reviewed authorities had lists that were not current. None of the authorities properly monitored buildings under their responsibility, including schools, and Daliyat al-Karmel and Emek HaMaayanot were unaware they were required to do so. The auditor recommended that ministries and government agencies consistently carry out annual monitoring, that the status and powers of the task force be formally regulated, and that municipalities receive legal enforcement powers. The Planning Administration responded that the task force had completed all authorized activity by 2019 and that enforcement rests with local authorities, not the task force.
