Malé, Maldives – Housing Minister Mohamed Aslam has stated that housing projects were announced in Maldives to check the demand for it and that the government never promised to build houses.
Housing projects were announced by many councils in various atolls to build housing units in private lands. Interested individuals were asked to submit forms which many of them did. The Housing Minister was summoned to the Parliament’s sitting today, for questioning due to lack of any further information on the project since then.
Answering a question from MP of Velidhoo Consitueny Abdullah Shafeeg, Aslam said that the housing project was announced to analyse the number of people in need of housing and to do a “housing need assesment”. He also added that the announcement was merely for verification purposes of the Ministry and that he would not say that they are about to build houses for any island yet.
He further said that some people misinterpreted the announcement back then as well and that this announcement was not to build houses for anyone. He also noted that the misconceptions may have been due to lack of clarification during the announcements.
In addition to this, Minister Aslam said that over 6000 people applied for the housing project back then and 6 companies put forth proposals to do the work. He added that the state had some discussions with the companies and that the projects could not be taken any further as the prices proposed by the companies were not feasible for the government at the time.
The Minister also said that the government does not have any plans of a housing project yet, and that this can be done only after leasing the lands by the councils and collecting money from it. He said that 25 islands would need to lease lands for 99 years in order to run a housing project and that it has also been presented to the Parliament Committee for the lease of these lands.
