Govt tampered portal to award flat to ineligible applicants: ACC

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has revealed that the points given to applicants for the previous government's Gedhoruveriya scheme to provide flats to people living in the Male area have been tampered with and those who do not even live in the Male area are getting flats.

Alleging irregularities in handing over flats when the previous government's term was nearing its end, the agency had asked the housing ministry to stop the allotment process twice.

The ACC members were summoned to the Independent Institutions Committee of the Parliament on Wednesday for questioning.

ACC Vice-President Abdul Salam said the first letter was sent to the Housing Ministry on November 5 asking it to rectify the issues. He said he sent another letter on November 15 as no changes had been made.

Sharing some of the findings of the ACC investigation, Salam said the portal is designed to automatically generate marks according to the information submitted. However, the investigation found that the marks generated automatically had been altered manually later, he said.

“The marks are auto-generated and the marks are changed by the people who are supposed to approve them or the people who are supposed to supervise the approval,” he said.

"For example, the documents submitted are not eligible. If so the system will automatically generate ineligible. It appears that the form is manually changed to meet the eligibility criteria at the approval level".

One of the requirements of the Gedhoruveriya scheme is to have lived in the Male area for 15 years. However, the ACC investigation has found that even those who do not live in Male at all have been made eligible.

"Some people that are considered eligible, we definitely know from the documents that they are not residents of the city. However, there are such people who have been given flats after being marked as eligible," he said.

Noting that the ACC had not completely suspended the allotment of the flats, the government was given an opportunity to rectify such matters, he said, adding that the suspension was ordered to further investigate the matter as no reforms were made in the given opportunity.

The housing ministry of the previous government had stayed the allotment of flats till further orders from the ACC, but had signed agreements to allot flats to 4,000 people who they claimed to have scored the highest marks out of the 13,000-odd people on the permanent list.

They are the people who will be given flats from the 4,000 housing units being built in Hulhumale by the previous government through the Fahi Dhiriulhun Corporation (FDC). A ministry official told Atoll Times at the time that agreements had been signed with a total of 4,000 beneficiaries, but there were complaints that some people who got marks for flats were not specified nor agreements were signed.

Following complaints to the ACC about the previous government's housing projects, the new government has decided to review the permanent list of flat recipients. The housing minister of this government has also said that the place where the land has been granted under the Binveriya scheme may be moved to another area in the same island where the land was granted.