The parliamentary investigation committee to probe the effectiveness of the housing plans and programmes provided by the Housing and Urban Planning Ministry will submit its report on Tuesday, its chairman Mohammed Al Belushi said.
The committee will hold a final meeting with the Housing and Urban Planning Minister Amna Al Romaihi today to answer several queries, he told our sister paper Akhbar Al Khaleej.
He stated that one of the key observations the committee reached was that the ministry’s criteria for distributing housing units had compromised the principle of seniority in favour of giving priority to residents of specific areas.
He added that the committee also found that the new housing finance options had indeed helped reduce the number of applications on the waiting lists. Yet, they were not enough to eliminate them with only 17.7 per cent of applicants benefiting over a span of three years.
He further mentioned that the committee also observed a rise in the real cost of the housing units, even though the lands on which they were built are considered ‘royal grants’.
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