Okaz

 

The Ministry of Housing announced that it had accepted 600,000 out of more than 900,000 applications for its housing units. This means over 300,000 applications were rejected for various reasons.

 

The citizens who did not qualify believed the ministry had done them a great injustice and had used false reasons to turn down their applications. They said the reasons included claims that they either owned homes or that electricity meters were registered under their names.

 

I looked at the matter from the side of the qualified citizens. I think they are the most unlucky and they will not obtain houses in five or 10 years.

 

I know that I should not be pessimistic when the ministry is celebrating this event but this is the reality.

 

Since its establishment about five years ago until the present day, the ministry has not implemented a single project. Now if the ministry wants to distribute houses among the 600,000 winners, it will need at least 10 years if it builds 60,000 houses every year. This is an impossible task to accomplish judging by the ministry's previous achievements, which were zilch in five years.

 

This calculation does not of course take into account the number of new applications that will pour in over the next 10 years, during which the ministry will be busy constructing homes for qualified applicants.

 

The ministry took a long time to screen the applications. It now knows every minute detail about the lives of all the applicants.

 

Before that, the ministry took a long time to study how it was going to provide houses to eligible citizens. It had considered various options including cooperation with commercial banks and the private sector. It also thought of giving them land and a loan to build properties or supplying them with prefabricated homes.

 

The ministry did not at any time reveal to us a clear-cut plan to which it would be committed in providing citizens with housing units.

 

The ministry has, thus, become a center for research and studies for all other government departments wishing to know the finer details of every citizen.

 

High hopes were pinned on the ministry to come up with tangible accomplishments that would end the housing crisis, which has mushroomed like a cancerous tumor.

 

The disappointing thing is that the ministry was set up at an exceptional time to resolve an exceptional problem and for that it was provided with an exceptional budget.

 

Until now, the ministry has been maneuvering to gain time to avoid its commitments, which cannot be delayed. There is no indication that the housing crisis is in for an imminent resolution. People will still have to queue in long lines before the Real Estate Development Fund to obtain personal loans like they used to do for decades.

 

For all this and more, I believe that the applicants who were rejected were the luckiest ones. They will not have to lose time waiting for the ministry to come to their rescue and will have to depend on themselves to resolve their problems.

 

I have a question to the citizens whose applications were approved: Do you really believe that with its current structure and modus operandi the ministry will be able to distribute more than 600,000 housing units?