
Ministry rejects calls to halt flat handover
"Nothing has been done to require action. It cannot be done that way”.
By
Ahmed Mizyal
Housing ministry said on Tuesday that they have no intention to stop the first phase of the government's Gedhoruveriya scheme.
Members of the ministry's flat evaluation committee made the remarks after the president-elect's office on Tuesday asked the government to suspend the allocation of flats, threatening to take action if the state unfairly tried to allocate flats to certain people in the permanent list of 4,000 first round flat recipients.
Replying to a query from Atoll Times at the press conference held by the flat committee, its chairman and state minister for housing Akram Kamaluddin said there was no irregularity or negligence in compiling the permanent list.
“The ACC people came and looked at those things yesterday... there is nothing we have not shown them,” Akram said.
"Nothing has been done to require action. It won't be done that way”.
Akram said that in the government of former President Abdullah Yameen, when President-elect Dr Mohamed Muizzu was the housing minister, the government continued to hand over the documents of receipt of flats until the afternoon of the day President Ibrahim Mohammed Solih was sworn in as President in 2018.
“People who acted in that way are telling us today to stop this work,” Akram said.
The transitional office has requested to postpone the handover of the flats. Akram said the works will not stop as long as the government remains in power. Things will continue according to the rules, he said.
As soon as the permanent list was released, people unhappy with the list expressed their displeasure on social media. Last Sunday, some people went to the housing ministry to protest.
Akram said certain people were trying to create doubts among the public about the way the list was compiled.
“Certain people are doing it to discredit the government and make it look bad,” he said.
He said people had made similar statements when the Binnveriya scheme allocated land and tried to cast doubt on the lottery as well.
“So this is a ‘pot stirred' by certain people,” Akram said.
Committee member Mohamed Arif said that even if a new government takes over, the interim government has no intention of handing over the flats in a hurry.
"Otherwise, should we make the complaint period for one day? Or should we not alot time for any complaints, and finish this soon?" He explained.
"We are at the pace of carrying this out flawlessly. The government will continue until the 17th. So, at that pace, we will go the right way and do the work that needs to be done”.
According to Arif, during the period open to complaint:
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About 2,000 complaints were received from three-bedroom applications and 900 from two-bedroom flats
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When the complaints were randomly checked, most of them were regarding the lengths of time they had been living in Male
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The scoring report will be available on the portal very soon
Arif said unlike previous governments, this government has implemented housing projects in a very transparent manner. There was no one or civil service employee to know about the schemes implemented by the previous government and the work was done by hiring temporary employees, he said.
"We have shown the system to people in the incoming government and transition committees. It is not politicians who are handling this. Unlike previous governments, this time everything will be in the hands of civil servants. None of this work will be lost," he said.
The Gedhoruveriya scheme's permanent list of complaints expires on Thursday. Complaints can be submitted through the Gedhoruverin portal.